


still water

by just_peachyy



Series: beginning of tomorrow [1]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Character Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, M/M, im literally so sorry, is this soul mate au? maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:04:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_peachyy/pseuds/just_peachyy
Summary: Over and over again, retreat into what you once knew.





	1. first;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! It's been a while. I'm sorry for the long silence, and here's my way of making it up to you! 
> 
> This is the first part out of a three-maybe-four part reincarnation au that I've been pondering and ironing out for a long time. This first part is based on the Meiji Restoration period in Japan, during the late 1860s, where practical imperial rule was restored and given back to the Empire of Japan under Emperor Meiji. Tokugawa land is seized after the Boshin war, and some shogunate forces escape to Hokkaido and try to set up a new Empire. There, armies lead by the real life Hijikata (Toshizo rather than Toshirou) are defeated by forces loyal to the emperor, which finalizes the defeat of the Tokugawa shogunate.
> 
> I am in no way an expert on history! You're welcome to point out discrepancies - but as always, thank you for reading!

There is an awful symmetry of things where Gintoki and Hijikata are concerned. Hijikata is fairly convinced that it will end by killing them both. The first instance is when Gintoki visits him at Shinsengumi headquarters after a raid gone terribly wrong. 

Hijikata turns his face away from the sliding doors and pretends to sleep, evening the rise and fall of his bandaged chest. 

"I know you're awake." Gintoki says, and his voice is carefully empty and devoid of emotion. "I brought you some things." 

Hijikata rolls his head on the pillow to face him. "Sorry." 

Gintoki is sitting by the side of his futon, a bundle of what smells like bread and sweet rice cakes beside him, covered slightly by his haori. He looks windswept and unkempt. His chest aches. 

"What are you sorry for?" Gintoki reaches forward and pushes his hair off his forehead, hand lingering on his skin. Soft enough to make Hijikata feel that he's made of blown glass. 

The rims of his eyes are red from exhaustion, or crying, or both. He smells like outside air, clean wind and an edge of frost. 

"For getting hurt. For making you worry." Hijikata grabs Gintoki's hand in his own and brings it down to his mouth and presses a kiss against his knuckles, red and raw from washing kimonos and the cold air.

"You idiot," Gintoki trembles, and a small drop of wetness hits Hijikata's cheek, like rain. He's squeezing his eyes shut, clenching his fingers hard around Hijikata's.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Come here," Hijikata touches hesitant fingers to his cheek and guides him down towards his mouth.

Hijikata calls his name softly as the space between them shrinks and dilates like a tide, growing searing, unbearable, choked with love and shared breath. 

"You almost died. They didn't let me see you until today, they said you - you were hanging somewhere between living and -" 

"Hush," Hijikata kisses him again. More salt. "I'm alright now, aren't I? No need to fret." 

"I'm not - _fretting_ \- I was just - " Gintoki drops his head onto Hijikata's collarbone, nosing against the ridge of bone. "They told me you were hanging on by a thread." 

"And I'm alright now." 

He receives a pointed look at the bandages on his chest and around his arms, but Gintoki gives an explosive sigh and tucks his nose against his jugular. A moment passes. Two. Hijikata lets himself drift. He's moored to him - moored to Gintoki. A bright spot of warmth and constant light and someone like a mirror - someone who knows how to read him just like Mitsuba or Kondou-san did. 

He's losing it. He's losing people in his fights, and not because he's killed them or lead them into a fray - simply because he turns away at crucial moments and they slip once - and they're gone. Mitsuba died waiting for him, and he'll never forgive himself for that. Kondou-san died defending a keep while he was injured, when it was his job, and both himself and Okita will never forgive him for that. Two threads. 

"You'd find me again, right?" Gintoki whispers, his voice cracking.

"What?" His memory vignettes to when they met - sharp winter. Gintoki had been running errands with the two kids that orbit him like he's their sun, and Hijikata had seen him from across the frozen river while he was on patrol. White hair and pale skin to match the weather and the skies. Eyes that burned with a silent sort of strength, one that had thrilled Hijikata but also scared him to his core. 

"Gran told me that," he hesitates. "That we're fated, or something. To meet again and again because our souls are tied together or something."

Hijikata blinks. 

"I know it's stupid," Gintoki says in a rush, and Hijikata shakes his head hurriedly. 

"No, no." 

"Hijikata -" 

"It makes sense." He says quietly. 

Gintoki's mouth is open, bottom lip trembling like the words are building up at a dam, waiting to spring free. 

"Of course I'd find you again." Hijikata brushes slow fingers through the other man's hair, dragging fingernails gently against his scalp just to feel him shudder in delight. "But don't say it like we're gonna be parted soon." 

Gintoki looks up at him, his eyes painfully empty. "I'm just making sure," he whispers. He knows - Gintoki's lost more people than Hijikata, drowns in their names and their memories at seemingly random moments but refuses to talk about them. Sometimes they will spend the night together and Gintoki will wake up and won't be able to go back to sleep, or he will be gone at dawn without warning, only to return in the evening and fall into a deep sleep. 

Hijikata will emerge from Gintoki's small room and wander in the halls above Otose's teahouse where he works for room and board, where she trains geiko; young women will brush past him, makeup in various states of completion, chattering vividly about nothings as they leave the scent of camellia flowers behind them. Otose will wave him downstairs, and more often then not he will find Gintoki nursing a cup of tea at the table, shoulders hunched over bittersweet heat. 

He doesn't think that he will ever know him completely, but he doesn't think that he wants that, either. It seems cruel, to be able to know someone and chase them towards their deepest recesses to seek refuge from someone. Where they are now is enough. More than. 

"Lie down." Hijikata says, shifting over and lifting the thick blanket. Gintoki slides in beside him, careful not to jostle him. 

If only time would take mercy on them and slow her ever increasing march! Gintoki closes his eyes and tries to memorize him before the nagging knowledge that he has to be back at Otose's comes to dominate his mind. Black smudges of lashes, longer than you would expect, around blue eyes that were always either creased with strain or thought. Ink black hair that shines like the wing of a raven in cold sunlight, skin that becomes freckled in the summer along his shoulders and across his nose and cheeks during high summer. The rise and fall of his voice through bamboo doors, through the echo of a hall, through the hush of Gintoki's room. Against his throat. His shoulder. His mouth. 

Like a heartbeat. If only. If only. 

He always feels like they are running out of time. 

Otose drops off a letter after a couple weeks have passed. Hijikata has written to him - that he hasn't been doing patrols because he is busy, and would he like to come to his house for dinner? Gintoki inks his reply neatly on a new sheet of paper - he would love to come over - even though the discrepancy bothers him. It's not like he hasn't been busy before - on the contrary, Hijikata is a very busy man. It's that he is being invited to dinner by a man who often works late into the dawn that sticks wrong with him.

But he doesn't complain; that's waiting until the actual night. 

He walks towards the river, where the night market is about to close, to pick up last minute vegetables for Otose. He passes a single Shinsengumi officer, his heart jumping at the familiar black uniform jacket before sinking back as the man turns around and nods at him, very clearly not Hijikata. 

Less officers. More unrest in the government, but Gintoki doesn't hear enough of it to care as much as he should. Kabuki-cho was resilient and calm. It was sheltered, it always rose back, according to Otose, who had never left. 

Less officers. More unrest. Less Hijikata. More emptiness. 

The last of the leaves fall from the trees and the air seems to be holding its breath. Mornings bring frost on the grass and by mid-morning it is slick. 

A couple days pass. There is soon snow on the ground and his breath steams in front of him as he walks to Hijikata's small house in one of the neighborhoods by the river. The door opens before he can knock and he is tugged inside and greeted with a gentle kiss. Warmth slams into him like a physical wall, and he feels the breath punched out of him. 

Gintoki's eyes cross as he tries to keep him in his field of view, and Hijikata laughs into his mouth before slipping away. 

"I missed you." He says, taking Gintoki's haori from him. 

"I missed you too." He sniffs the air appreciatively. "Smells great." 

"Come sit down." Gintoki follows his broad shoulders into the main room. His yukata is loose around the back of his neck, and as he bends his head down to arrange the cushions Gintoki can see a pale triangle of skin. 

His movements are still ginger and strained from his wounds. Some of them must be barely on their way to healing when he was released. The sight of Hijikata holding his side gently as he bends to check the rice makes a roil of anger and worry rise to the back of his throat. 

It feels like he is choking. "How come you invited me for dinner?" 

"I can't see my lover for dinner?" 

"It's not that," Gintoki bites out. "You said you were busy. You can't drop by for patrol but you can cook for me?" 

A slight shadow crosses Hijikata's face but he leans forward. "It - It was important. I couldn't tell you in passing on the street." 

Gintoki bites back a small retort but nods. 

"Help me set the table?" 

There's fish. And a heaping bowl of rice, and soup, and fried mushrooms and crunchy seaweed, tangy radish and sesame tossed noodles that he says he learned from Saitou.

He isn't hungry, but he likes the gentleness in Hijikata's eyes when he watches him eat, so he eats a lot anyway, even asks for seconds. He makes appreciative noises - and he's not lying, it really is good, but what Hijikata said earlier is stuck on him like a bramble, itching and making him want to snap and tear at it. 

They talk about nothing, at first. It drives him crazy. The weather, if Gintoki has been eating properly, the sweet shop across the street that closed down. Hijikata takes his chopsticks and splits the fish down the middle, cracking through the fried skin and into soft flesh. He picks the bones out and transfers pieces into Gintoki's bowl, keeps talking about nothings. 

Maybe Gintoki puts down his chopsticks a bit too hard, because Hijikata falters. 

"Sorry." Gintoki says immediately, guilt seeping up inside him.

"No," he waves the apology away. "I shouldn't be distracting from it."

"Then?" He pushes. 

Hijikata looks down at the plate they set aside for the bones of the fish, picked cleanly out from white flesh. 

"Do you know Goryokaku castle? Southern Hokkaido." 

Worry is pooling in his stomach. "Yes."

"There's some trouble. They want me to go down there, take the castle for us. For the shogunate -" 

"When?" 

"Next week." Hijikata closes his eyes. Next week is the anniversary of Kondou-san's death. He was going to be in mourning, but they would rather move him to Hokkaido dressed in black war clothes instead. 

"No!" Gintoki says sharply.

"No?" 

"You're not going," His voice shakes. Worry is strangling him, fear, anger, frustration. "You - you just got out of the hospital, you can barely move. How are you going to - to fight?" _How are you going to come back to me?_

"You know I have to." His voice is flat in an effort not to stoke the sparks into a wildfire. To keep him calm. 

"The shogunate is _dead_," Gintoki scrambles. "You're hurt, you can't fight like this." 

"It's not. Not yet. If they die, I'm going to be there. It's our last stand." If not for himself, then at least for Kondou-san. He wants to see the reason for which his men fell with his own two eyes. 

"You're not going." He says again, and he hates the way he sounds: plaintive, childlike, whiny. 

"I have to. If not for the shogunate - then for Kondou-san." His name hurts to say - it hurts to remember his clear hazel eyes, the crows feet and laughter lines around them. He feels like he is being pulled apart from different directions. 

"Why won't you stay for me, then!" Gintoki says, his voice climbing. Crumbling, ever crumbling. 

"Gintoki."

"Please." Shaking, he lowers his head. "Hijikata. Please."

"I'll come back. I promise. I'll come back to you. Always." 

He feels a gentle touch on the crown of his head. "Please raise your head. I'm going, but I'll always come back to you."

Gintoki looks up, grabs his hand before he can pull it away. Hijikata's fingers curl around his, gripping him as tightly as he is him. 

"Next week when?" 

"Thursday." 

Gintoki's fingers squeeze tighter. That's less than 9 days. 

"Stay over tonight?" Hijikata asks. "I'll lend you clothes, I just want more time with you." 

"Aren't you working?" 

"I've got Tetsu to take care of a lot." Hijikata leans down and presses his mouth to the backs of his knuckles. 

"Okay." Gintoki whispers. He gets a bracing grin in return. 

They finish dinner quickly, and Hijikata clatters the dishes in the sink before turning to the bath. Gintoki can hear water running, hear the groan and clanking of the water pipes as they heat. 

"Go on." Hijikata says. He hands him a folded yukata for sleep. It's patterned with little cranes in flight. 

"Come with me." Gintoki says. "Please?"

The look in the other man's eyes is terribly soft as he agrees. They undress amid the steam and damp of the bathroom, and Gintoki bites his lip as more and more of Hijikata's wounds come into light. A huge scar across his chest, running diagonal to his shoulder. Silvery white scars on his thighs, old ropy scars on his back and on his arms. The one on his chest is tender and still pink. The stitches are still visible. 

They wash each other carefully, their touches as hesitant as if the others skin was paper, or blown glass. When they get into the bath, Hijikata pulls Gintoki to his chest so that they face the same way. Gintoki protests. 

"Your chest -!"

"It's alright." Hijikata drops a kiss against his shoulder. "Hush." 

He lets himself relax. He likes the way their bodies curve together, how close he can let him get without flinching. He lets himself lean into the lull of this painful domesticity. 

For a brief second, a bright, flaring thought rears its head. What if he went with him? They would ride to Goryokaku. He doesn't know how to fight, but he does know how to ride a horse, how to shoot a gun. He does know how to stand next to Hijikata and - and - 

He would only get in the way, a sly voice whispers. Maybe he would even get killed, and Hijikata would die needlessly, distracted by removed pain. 

The thought of it makes him cold. 

Just as bad; the thought of leaving Shinpachi and Kagura behind in a world that does not care much for runts like them, young and still learning. Shinpachi cannot live with his older sister, who is barely old enough to be taking care of herself on top of their sick father. Kagura's father travels and her brother drops by sporadically, leaving money behind for Gintoki on behalf of their parents. 

The world is edging into winter now. Children are going sick and hungry and Gintoki works himself to the bone and he knows that Otose is kind but she would give them to a children's home, and he would rather cut off his own hand then subject them to that.

He shivers and Hijikata's kisses pause.

"Are you cold?" 

"No," Gintoki reaches over his shoulder to stroke absently at Hijikata's cheek. He forces levity into his voice.

_it can't last it can't last it won't last_

"You're trying to distract me." Gintoki says, but his voice is weak. He can't help leaning his head back against his shoulder. 

"Is it working?" Hijikata asks with a small laugh. 

"Nngh." 

"Let me wash your hair." 

They don't speak; he suspects that there has never been the need to. Hijikata's fingers are soft, hot points of pressure, working soap through his hair and slicking oil through the strands, ever so careful. Gintoki melts into him, shoulders unknotting. He doesn't want to think about it. Next Thursday is too close. He can't think about it. He'll go crazy. He can't. He has to wait - and that seems to be, maddeningly, the only thing that he does where they are concerned. 

"Sit up." Hijikata is saying, fingers pressing gently into his back. Gintoki shifts, water sloshing over the edge of the tub. Hijikata grabs the small bucket and rinses his hair, a low hum rising discordantly from his throat. 

"Feel good?" 

"Yeah," Gintoki's reply is nearly a moan and that draws a laugh from the other man. 

Still humming, Hijikata works camellia oil into his hair. The gentle scent is stifling, but Gintoki breathes it in anyway. The moment is so domestic and quiet and Gintoki wants to live in it forever, never mind that his skin would get all pruney and wrinkled from the wet; it's a reminder of how far they've come together, just an accumulation of their love and trust. 

He shakes his head. He's being too sappy. 

Hijikata pulls his hands away at the small shake of Gintoki's head. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No! I mean - well - yes, but not in that way. Just touch me more. Other places." 

He laughs, and kisses behind Gintoki's ear. "Insatiable."

"Hurry," Gintoki groans out, and Hijikata's hands sweep over his stomach and his chest, down to where he wants - neither of them are very patient. He can feel Hijikata getting hard behind him, pressed against the small of his back. Hijikata's hand is calloused from holding and swinging a sword. It wraps around him and strokes, all the blood rushing downwards and leaving him dizzy in the pressed heat and pleasure. 

His breathing quickens as Hijikata touches him exactly the way he knows he likes it, all his awareness shrinking down to the warm yield of the water, the heat and pressure of Hijikata behind him. The two of them melting, melding into one another so that they are indistinguishable. Inextricable. 

He comes and he feels like he is floating away from his body, anchored to Hijikata like a kite to a string. He lets himself close his eyes for five minutes. Five minutes before he has to wake up and get out of the bath. But when he opens his eyes he is in a warm yukata and under a thick blanket, in a room full of half shadows. 

"Hijikata." He groans, debating whether or not he should sit up. The pillowcase is a little damp from where his head had been resting. 

"Mmh." He's sitting by the window, a single candle illuminating his desk as he writes - something. His inkstone is almost dry. A kiseru sits in its stand beside his waving brush. 

"What - what time is it?" He raises himself up on his elbows. 

"Half past ten. You fell asleep in the bath." Hijikata sighs and pushes his brush away from him, pinning the sides of the paper so that the ink can dry properly. He moves over to Gintoki and kisses him. "Sleep. You're tired." His thumb brushes under Gintoki's eyes, where he knows bruise-like shadows sit. 

"What about you?" Gintoki asks, watches the other man lean down and brush his mouth against the backs of his knuckles. 

"Let me finish something and I'll be right over." He says, and he nudges Gintoki's shoulders so that he lies down again, retreats to his desk. 

Gintoki turns onto his side and watches the brush wave around, tracing designs in the air. It lulls him. He lets himself drift - he's doing that often. The hiss of the brush over paper stops, and he blinks himself back to the present, shifting and watching Hijikata clean his things. 

"How long?" Gintoki asks sleepily as he lies down beside him, shuffling the covers over himself. 

"Mm?"

"How long will you be gone?"

Hijikata looks at the ceiling resolutely. "As long as I have to be." He rolls his head to look at his lover. "But not too long."

"I'll hold you to that." Gintoki whispers, and his eyes shut and he sleeps. 

He dreams of his kids that night - Shinpachi and Kagura, who look up at him like he's the world. They're alone. He's alone. They fit together. 

Thursday comes far too quickly. Hijikata is half in his armor and he drops by Otose's to say goodbye, pressing a searing kiss to his mouth and pressing their foreheads together. 

"I'll come back." He whispers, and Gintoki aches for him already. 

"You better." Gintoki grits out, and he tightens his fingers in the grooves of his armor before forcing himself to let go, and pushing Hijikata away from him. "Go. Save Edo. Make a better Japan." _I love you._

"For you." Hijikata bows his head, kisses the back of his hand chastely. A tether._ I love you too._

Hijikata is lucky. Or - he doesn't believe in luck. But he does know that you can be in the right place at the right time, and he has a knack for doing so. He barely escapes a collapsing barricade, with only his foot getting caught in some rubble. 

A dark cloud overshadows his thoughts. He cannot shake the feeling that - no. He can't think about it.

All he can do is pray to be in the right place at the right time, again and again, as long as it takes for him to get back to Gintoki. He needs a days rest to be back on his feet, and he composes a poem and cuts a lock of his hair to tuck into a small silk bag. He takes out his tanto too, and his kiseru, and entrusts them to Tetsu, who he orders to guard the flank, near the back. He writes three letters: Gintoki, his older brother, and Okita.

When his foot is healed he rides back out into battle. Goryokaku is proud and domineering, the mouths of cannons peeking out over the walls of the castle, pale stone shining like a beacon at dusk.

He does not know that there has been trading with the west and the soldiers at Goryokaku. They have guns. He can hear then snarling and ripping through his men like paper. He does not know that there are enemies approaching from the rear. It is not until they are pinched between the yawning cannon mouths of the castle and the rear guard that Hijikata feels his dread solidify and condense, drop and sink into the pit of his stomach. Still, he raises his sword and rallies his men to him, until they dwindle and he is forced to retreat. 

He is a bad general. Kondou-san was much better suited, knew how to disguise his worry and his fear in the wry curve of a smile and lead men onward and escape the hungry maw of death but he can't think about that now else he'll be overrun. 

He brings up the rear. He does not see the horsemen galloping at full tilt towards him - he hears them, though. He thinks it sounds like his heartbeat, like Gintoki's when they are together and vulnerable and yielding. He hears shots go off like firecrackers during festivals. He tastes blood in his mouth and salt from sweat, and he can see the drawn tendons on the horses neck as he urges it to outrun their pursuers. 

(Gintoki Gintoki Gintoki; sweat at the hollow of his neck, the clarity and strength in his eyes, his gentle but unforgiving resilience) 

He feels a hot pinprick of pressure at his lower back where Gintoki so likes to touch, and then he feels the ground beneath his cheek, and then he feels nothing at all. 

_Sakata Gintoki. His, his, his._

A letter arrives for Gintoki at the end of the month. Tetsu delivers it personally, his eyes red and watery. Gintoki takes the envelope from him, his fingers turning numb. Tetsu presses other things into his hands; a silk bag, a long, rectangular case, and a sleek tanto. A poem. Gintoki won't open that until the next month. He feels like he's had boulders strapped to his feet and dropped into a fathomless river. 

It's cold and dark. 

He takes out the kiseru with still, sure hands once he is inside his room. He shakes out a stringy ball of tobacco, and pours sake into two dishes. He packs the bowl gently, like he would. 

(A thousand moments; in sunlight, in moonlight, in the light of fireworks and lantern light, all with smoke coiling around him like a veil) 

The first inhale makes him cough. He waves away the smoke and knuckles his tears away, and stoically takes another drag. 

Hijikata was _his_. No one had any right to steal from him, to punch the breath out of his chest so thoroughly that he would be gasping for rest of his life. 

His lungs fill with smoke and he is choked by grief and memory, and he dumps ash into the second dish of sake set on his windowsill. He bends double; suddenly the pain is unbearable. He chokes, stuffs the sleeve of his yukata into his mouth and screams into it. He is so angry. He is so angry. He is alone. The one who truly understood him - the stars had dropped him in front of him and just as easily ripped him away. 

_Hijikata Toshirou. He said he'd come back. He said he would come back._

_(His his his, all Gintoki's)_

He burns, but at the same time he is full of ice and hollow shadows. Hot tears soak into his sleeve and wet the kiseru he holds clenched between his fingers. He presses his mouth against the back of his knuckles in a quiet mockery of his lover, now dead, now in the earth, now parted from him. 

Spring is coming soon. He can feel the thaw in the air around him, but he knows that inside of him it will take a lifetime to thaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I - *knocks over pitcher of water and runs* 
> 
> thanks for reading! @drunkmaenad on tumblr, come yell with me. Next chapter coming soon!


	2. second;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This second chapter was such a long journey for me even though it's only been a bit over a week! I've been writing nonstop - this is like late 1900s. I don't have a specific year or reference point event for it - oops! I took a risk with this stylistically, and I hope you guys like it!

Springtime comes in a rush of color and a sigh. Deep blue nights with the distended moon, swollen petals dropping to the ground as cicadas sing throatily from the leaves and new green. 

Shoyou-sensei died in the spring, which makes it so ironic because it was his favorite season. Gintoki was far away in Tokyo doing book signings as his teacher wasted away surrounded by his friends. Only Katsura contacted him after. Takasugi harbored a burning cold anger towards him for abandoning him - for abandoning them. For choosing his books over them. 

Gintoki had felt worthless. 

(He still does.) 

He picks plums from his garden and drops them into a basket below him. Birds sing sweetly even as he drowns in memories and thoughts from a different time. 

He bought a house in the countryside with the money from his last book, selling his small, cramped Tokyo apartment in favor of a lazy old house in the middle of nowhere. The garden had been overgrown and tangled, wild in its stupor and indulgence. He'd waded through it with shears and come out with scratches, sweaty but victorious. In return, it yielded plums, peaches, even some sparse persimmon in the fall if he was lucky. Bright orange and pink, the rich bruise-like shade of a ripe plum. Gintoki had begun writing again, but he was in no rush. His words floated aimlessly like distracted shoals of birds. 

He climbs down the small ladder borrowed from next door and grabs the basket of plums. He leaves them on his kitchen table while he goes to shower off the sweat and the dust before grabbing his helmet and the plums and getting on his motorbike. 

The hospital - if you can call it that - isn't very far. He drives over the small hill that precedes it and parks in the shade of a maple tree, flipping on the kickstand and grabbing his small rucksack. 

He's easy to get along with. He reads to them, rambles, listens. Anything to make it easy, comfortable, fun. It helps soothe the ache. Everyone likes a familiar face, after all. 

He pokes his head into reception, handing Sarutobi a plum at her batting of lashes. She doesn't look up from where she is flipping through a stack of files before biting into the plum and waving him inside.

He visits plenty of people - there are small kids who are getting a day's rest after the flu, old people recovering or getting worse. His favorite is Jirocho, and old man who laughs from his belly and tells rude jokes despite himself. He knows his neighbor visits him sometimes too. 

There's someone new. He holds his breath and hides in an empty room until the doctor's voices pass, before he pops his head into the room they'd just vacated. 

The man inside is propped up on a mountain of pillows, head turned towards the window. His hands are clenched into the white sheets, but he turns at the sound of Gintoki's shoes scuffing on the floor. 

"Can I help you?" The man asks dryly. His accent is sharp and not as loose or rounded as the people who live here. 

"I, ah," Gintoki clears his throat. He can't bring himself to take more than a couple steps into the room, standing half-in half-out with his hand on the doorframe. Something about the room is stilted - as if he's passed into a different dimension. He gets close enough so that he can see the man better. Though he is pale and very noticeably thin, the man's eyes ares are strong: a bright, steely blue. Thick black hair falls down to curl endearingly behind his ears. 

The man's eyebrows cock upwards. 

"You'll see me around a lot," Gintoki says a bit lamely. "Do you want a plum?" 

The man shakes his head. "No solid food." he says quietly. "Do you work here?"

"In sorts," He replies, then hesitates. "Can you eat jam?" 

"If I have to." The man relaxes into the pillows. Under the bright white lights, Gintoki can make out dark bags under his eyes.

"I'll bring you something you can eat next time."

"Next time?" His brows draw together like thunderheads. "Why?" 

"'Cause I come here, that's why. And everyone else is getting plums, I don't want you to feel left out."

The man turns his face towards the window again. "What's your name?"

"Uh. Sakata Gintoki."

"Hijikata Toshirou." He replies, turning back to fix brilliant eyes on him. Something about them seem painfully familiar, like a scent from a dream. 

The thought makes a shiver run a quick scale down his spine. He's curious. Hijikata has him soundly.

  
The thought of it gnaws at him and he rides home as quickly as he can, clattering inside to sit at his typewriter and grabbing a sheaf of paper from his shelf. He wipes his hand on a damp washcloth, grimacing at the stickiness of plum juice; he does a rough outline of the atmosphere at the hospital (sedate, quiet, not sad but not happy either), describes the way he saw Hijikata against the pillows (still and silent, like a painting twice removed from life until Gintoki's voice shattered some sort of liminal veil and jerked him into his world - or was it the other way around?), the sloping sunlight lying on his pure white sheets (like gilded cream? His hands hesitate on that one, and he puts a question mark next to it). 

Drained from the rushing outpouring of writing, he leans back and gropes around his nightstand for cigarettes. He smokes with the door to the veranda open, lying on his stomach on a cushion he's dragged off the couch. He wonders at Hijikata. He wonders if he should go back. Maybe make some jam for him 

His lips curl up at the thought of an incredulous Hijikata holding a jar of peach jam or something equally sweet in his hands. He doesn't seem the type to have a sweet tooth. 

He takes and drops the cigarette when it curls down to his fingers, and he drops it into the ashtray at his elbow before returning to his typewriter. He wants to know more - something about him is intriguing, and Gintoki feels like a moth to a flame. 

He goes across the street to return the borrowed ladder, and maybe even to pick Otose's brain about jams. 

  
Hijikata doesn't look very impressed when Gintoki visits again. But by the second week his face doesn't betray any exasperation; just a small flash of comfort and familiarity, and Gintoki knows it's because he breaks the grey scale monotony of the hospital. He's been bringing small things every time; a small jar of jam that he'd put too much sugar in (the grimace on Hijikata's face when he'd tasted it! He didn't have a sweet tooth after all), a case of soft sweets that melted in your mouth that he'd traded Tae some old books for, a stack of poetry books that he'd went out and bought second hand when he'd mentioned that he liked poetry. 

They watch springtime ripen together through that wide window, sometimes with the windows open to hear the birds or the soft hiss and rustle of rain, or simply to let in more sun. 

Hijikata was an officer of some kind in Tokyo. He'd been visiting his brother in a town some ways away and he'd been travelling back to Tokyo and passing through this town when he'd collapsed all of a sudden, brought to the hospital by Hattori and Sarutobi. 

His superior, Hijikata said sourly, had put him off duty and on sick leave in the middle of nowhere until further notice. The doctors are puzzled about his illness. 

"Middle of nowhere!" Gintoki says, affronted. "Don't you like it?" 

"I wouldn't know," Hijikata replies, rolling a ball of lint under his fingers. "They're scared that if I move around I'll get worse. That's why they haven't moved me to Tokyo or back to Bushu." He shrugs, and Gintoki hates seeing the flippant defeat in the movement. It doesn't suit him. 

"Not even a walk?" 

His thin face betrays a hunger. "If only."

"Mmh," Gintoki says, but his mind is spinning with the desire to show Hijikata around this so called middle of nowhere. If he could talk to the doctors and see if he could get him out, if only for a couple hours ...

"Tell me about it." Hijikata's fingers touch his where they lie on the side of the bed. Gintoki blushes brightly and jerks his hands back, but Hijikata is looking out the window again. From the sliver of his face that he can see, he thinks that he sees longing. Open windows don't do spring justice. 

"I have plum trees. Peaches and cherries too, and persimmon if I'm lucky." Gintoki starts slowly. Hijikata's turned back to look at him with those bright eyes of his, shadowed underneath his fringe. 

"And there's a small river that goes by, behind my neighbor's. That's who taught me how to make that jam. If you go early in the morning, you can see dragonflies and swallows hunting dragonflies and drinking from the river." Gintoki spreads his hand and sweeps it low over the sheets to mimic the birds, and Hijikata's eyes are so hungry as he watches the movement.

"I have a family of swallows that built their house under the eaves of my brother's house in Bushu." Hijikata says. He isn't quite here in this hospital room with him. He must be walking through sunlit rice paddies and watching those swallows himself. "They come back every year. My brother always talks about them in his letters." 

"I wish you could see them," Gintoki whispers long after, when Hijikata has drifted to sleep. 

Gintoki has to beg the doctor for a chance to take Hijikata out on a walk, promising to to bring him straight back after a couple hours. Sarutobi watches the entire ordeal from the doorway, rolling her eyes as Gintoki walks out grinning like a fool. 

"If he shows any sign of getting tired, or anything that sticks out as wrong to you, bring him straight back. And watch out for him 'cause he's like you." Sarutobi scolds. 

"Mm, I know, I know - huh?" He scratches his head. "Just like me? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Headstrong idiots, both of you." She tosses her hair over her shoulder with a roll of her eyes. "You two suit each other. Fools."

"You -" He can't bring himself to say anything back, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Sarutobi's mouth tilts up in a wry smile at the sight. 

"I bring up that boy and you get all quiet, huh? Cat got your tongue?" She lets out a peel of laughter, but it isn't unkind. "Have fun. And don't do anything perverted to him."

"What's that supposed to mean!"

"Hijikata!" He pokes his head in, but the smile drops off his face when he sees the curtains around his bed drawn shut. He knows he's still there - the light from the window outlines a dark shape in bed. 

"What?" A sleepy reply comes from behind the curtain. Or rather - not sleepy, but something a bit more raw - 

"Can I come in? I have a bit of good news." 

"That's good to hear," Hijikata shifts in bed a fraction, propping himself up against pillows before reaching to draw back the curtain. His voice is sardonic, and something in Gintoki sticks and catches. 

He looks pale and drawn, black hair even more black under these harsh lights and skin even paler than usual. He's got violet bruise-like shadows under his eyes, and his lips are dry and cracked. He's exhausted. 

"Are you okay?" He asks, sitting next to him. 

"Never been better." Hijikata leans back into the pillows. 

"Hijikata." His eyes waver from his face, to his hands resting on his lap, to his nightstand, which has a couple crumpled balls of paper and a couple envelopes too. 

"Let me hear some good news." Hijikata says, tapping the blanket a couple inches from where his knuckles rest. Gintoki can see right through him. He's forcing levity into his voice. 

Gintoki hesitates. "Your doctor said a walk might be alright. We can stop by my house to rest a bit, then I'll show you the river." 

Hijikata's wan face lightens and he smiles. Gintoki's heart sticks in his throat. He wants to make Hijikata smile like that more.

Gintoki waits in the van that he's borrowed from Hattori, waves when he sees Hijikata being accompanied out into the parking lot by Sarutobi. He's wearing borrowed clothes that are a bit too big for him what with how thin he is, but they suit him, dark charcoal grey against his skin and making his eyes shine with a searing intensity in the late afternoon sun. 

(Gintoki allows himself to wonder for a moment, about how Hijikata would look in all black. He shakes the sight out of his head, mouth dry)

"Ready to go?" Gintoki asks. 

"Always." Hijikata gives a nod of thanks to Sarutobi, who pats the side of the van before giving him a pointed look and raising an eyebrow. Gintoki sticks out his tongue. 

Gintoki peels out of the lot, driving fast to the bend right before the shrine, stopping right in front of the bristling frames of bright red gates that lead to the shrine. 

Hijikata steps out gingerly, closes his eyes and breathes in the slightly damp air. He's as pale as snow. It looks like a painting. 

Gintoki watches, one hand on the torii, spellbound. "Are you going to go in?" He asks. 

The look in Hijikata's eyes is wistful, a bit pained. "Not today." 

If they crane their necks they can see the small peak of the shrine's roof poking out from between the bamboo. Gintoki looks at Hijikata's hand and thinks about holding it, but he is turning back towards the car and opening the door to sit inside, leaning his head back against the headrest. 

"Are you tired?" Gintoki asks when they're back on the road. He has to shout over the wind, because Hijikata has the window down all the way and is leaning into it. 

"Not really." He shrugs. "Where to next?"

"Where do you want to go?"

There's a little pause before Hijikata says; "Show me your garden."

Dogs bark at the van when he pulls into his neighborhood. Some younger dogs trail behind it, shadowing the cloud of exhaust like an afterthought before turning and skittering away when Gintoki clicks his tongue at them. His house is small and modest - he was only one person, after all, and it was mostly the garden that he liked. He shoves open the gate to the back and winces at the shriek and groan of the hinges, ancient as they are. Hijikata follows close enough behind him so that Gintoki can feel the shadow of his warmth on his back. He is familiar. Something about him makes Gintoki want to orbit ever closer. 

"There are the plums," Gintoki points. "Plums and peaches there, and cherries - persimmon here." 

The dirt below the shade of the fruit trees is damp and dark, and Hijikata crouches down and presses his fingers into the soil like he would touch a lover. "Do they fruit often?"

"Ah - I moved in only two years ago, see, I'm not sure how often they fruit," Gintoki scratches the back of his head, watches the flex of Hijikata's back under the thin shirt as he stands back up. He makes a small noise and blinks up at the tree branches near the roof of the house. 

"Come here - look." Hijikata points up at one of the gnarled boughs of the persimmon tree. Gintoki leans forward, almost too near and too far into the other man's personal space, but neither of them complain. 

"What am I looking at?"

"You can't see it?" Hijikata touches his upper arm to guide him closer, and he breaks out into goosebumps, touches Hijikata's shoulder to keep his balance. 

"Sorry."

"Look." Hijikata keeps pointing, and eventually he shifts just right and Gintoki sees what he is looking at. A small nest. 

"Oh." He cranes his neck; small tufts of white feathers stick out of the small, stocky construction of mud and twigs, and it is so well hidden among the tangled branches of the persimmon tree that he gets the feeling it might disappear when he blinks. 

"My brother says it's good luck to have them nest at your house."

His eyes are a deep, deep blue when they meet his gaze. 

They go into the house - or rather, Gintoki invites him inside, then remembers the catastrophic mess that is his living room (never mind his bedroom, which is unspeakably worse), and tells Hijikata to stand outside for a moment while he goes to clean up. He's a whirlwind through the living room, picking up armfuls of blankets and discarded sweaters and the odd pair of pants and throwing them into his bedroom, clattering his dishes and his pots into the sink and turning on the water after spraying them with soap, kicking candy wrappers under the sofa and pushing his books off of it onto the floor so that they can sit. 

He invites Hijikata back inside properly, and watches him laugh at the halfhearted attempt to clean up. He smiles sheepishly and offers him a drink, which he accepts. He declines food, though, claiming that he isn't hungry. "Lost my appetite lately." Hijikata explains. Gintoki frowns. 

He drinks his coffee black, which Gintoki thinks he could have seen coming. To his dismay, he sits on the floor, facing out the veranda. 

"Do you write?" Hijikata points at the small desk in the corner, the typewriter and the crumpled mess of papers and reference books. 

"I - yeah. A little bit." 

"Are you famous?" He cocks an eyebrow. "Nobody in the force reads all that much - I doubt they know how to - so word doesn't really get to me much."

Gintoki laughs. "Not really." He looks down at his hands. 

"What kind of writing?" Hijikata leans back against the edge of the sofa, and Gintoki looks up just in time to see pain flash across his face. 

"What's wrong?" He asks, and he knows he's trodden somewhat on the frailty and the slow gentleness of the atmosphere, but Hijikata looks hurt and the thought of being the reason for which he goes back to the hospital and gets worse makes him physically nauseous. 

"Nothing, nothing, just an old - Gintoki, really, it's just an old injury. Don't worry," Hijikata shakes his head and waves him away. 

"Where? If it's old then it shouldn't be hurting you - I have these things for soreness or muscle pain, you can - unless you want painkillers?" He jumps to his shelf and digs through various books and boxes of things before he unearths a couple patches, holding them out to Hijikata. 

"Gintoki. Those are just placebos."

"I'll feel better if you have one on," He counters, and he can see the effort that it takes Hijikata to not roll his eyes. 

"Okay. Fine. I can't reach it properly, so come here and do it for me."

Gintoki sits behind him, waits until he rucks up his shirt to rest around his chest. 

"Where?"

"Lower back. Near the middle."

Tongue between his teeth, Gintoki peels off the backing and touches his hand to the place he thinks Hijikata is talking about. "Here?"

Hijikata twists around and touches his wrist, nudging him closer to his spine and higher up. "Here."

"Right." Gintoki can hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears like horses in full gallop. His hands shake; his back is unmarked and smooth, if not a bit thin. If he shifts, his spine presses too close to his skin. He has freckles on his back. Gintoki wants to trace them. 

"Gintoki?"

"Yeah? Huh. Yeah, sorry." He presses the patch on gently, ignoring the small tensing in the lines of Hijikata's body. "Sorry," he whispers again, and dares to let his hand linger longer on the curve of his back. 

"Mmh." Hijikata lets his shirt drop, and it's like the fall of a curtain; the spell is broken, and Gintoki pulls his hand away, and Hijikata shifts away imperceptibly to lean against the sofa with his side, propping his head up on his hand. 

The silence - although it only stretches out for a moment between them - feels like eternity. He cannot shake the feeling that Hijikata is someone he knows, or at least has seen somewhere before. Or at the very least - he is someone that fits Gintoki so neatly, so seamlessly that he feels as if he has known him forever. 

He dreads the idea of the sun setting on today. 

"You didn't answer my question," Hijikata says after a moment's pause. 

"Your - ah, what kind of writing?" He touches the edge of the carpet, idly running a finger along the stitching. "Something like still life."

"That's for painting." Hijikata says dryly.

"No! I mean - well yeah, but I think it describes what I write best." Gintoki reaches over to the shelf and drags out a book that's nearly falling apart at the seams. "Non fiction? If you really had to say it. I make up people, but they're based on real people." He shrugs. "I guess that's fiction."

Hijikata lets out a low laugh and tilts his head onto the sofa cushions, letting his eyes shut. 

Everything is so fleeting that it makes Gintoki's chest ache. Maybe that's why he writes - to preserve things. Like some twisted version of a taxidermist, except with people, places, things. Moments. He thinks of Otose and Jirocho, of Tae and her younger brother and even the siblings with bright red hair that come through town sometimes. He wants to be anchored to something; the thought comes unbidden. Perhaps that's why he came out here - because he felt so unmoored after one of the most precious people in his life died. 

He's looking for something. 

He wasn't sure he'd find it, and now - 

"My brother sent me a letter," Hijikata is saying lowly. His coffee is cold next to his knee. "He's visiting soon with his wife. To see me."

"That's - great!" Gintoki falters at the look on his face. Then, a small pang of fear. "Are you going back to, uh, Bushu?"

"I don't think so." There's a wry twist to his mouth that Gintoki isn't really sure he likes. "He just wants to see me."

"You don't sound very excited."

"We're not -" he hesitates. "Never mind. Forget I said it. He's coming, and I'll see him, then he'll leave until I get better."

_And then? And then? And then? _He gets better; he goes to Tokyo; he forgets he ever came to this small town in the middle of nowhere with the river and its barn swallows, the persimmon tree and the crushed cherry blossoms underfoot. Tokyo, with all its clean, chrome edges and cool detachment. He wonders if Hijikata likes the place. Hell, if he even suits it. 

"We should be getting back." Gintoki says slowly, unwillingly, glancing at the clock. 

"Show me the river first." Hijikata says, and Gintoki agrees. They walk out to it, hands stuffed in their pockets against the chill of early evening sets in. The damp air grows cool and almost cold when they get to the river, standing on the shore at the widest bend. Hijikata takes off his shoes and shuffles his feet into the pebbles and halfway into the water, unblinking across the bend. Gintoki watches him, scared to miss it. 

Water rushes over sleeping stones, loosening and prying dirt and small rocks free as it continues; in his mind's eye Gintoki flies above the river, following it until the mouth widens and widens, ignoring the small splitting of veins of water until he spills out into the ocean, hovering over the endlessness that has the color of a certain man's eyes. 

Hijikata looks like a painting in the halfhearted light of shade and sunset, painted with broad skeins of shadow and dappled light mottling his clothes and his face. He looks otherworldly. 

Gintoki thinks about how he would look against the ever-moving backdrop of Tokyo, the sharp edges that blur the further you get away from the centre, all the orderly lines that make your eyes cross with how busy they are. And in the middle, Hijikata, who overlaps with the one in front of him right now with his feet in the river and his eyes on the clouds above them. Gintoki loved Tokyo for the anonymity. He loved the lazy, slow lifestyle he could lead with the hustle and bustle of the city as a backdrop; perfect white noise. How people's eyes dropped right off of you after a split second. But the thought of being there at the same time as Hijikata, and the thought of not being able to see or even notice him in a throng of people unsettles him. 

But he loved it here too, with its slowness akin to water carving through rock. Inexorable, but rigid with routine through the town, so personal and close. He loved the hospital and the path into his garden, the swallows at dawn and in the evening over the river, the hush of grass and trees and the dead silence during winter. He loved -? 

Hijikata touches his shoulder. The bags under his eyes are more pronounced, but his eyes are brighter than he's ever seen them. "Should we go? Before Sarutobi takes away my dessert for a week."

"I'll bring you ten times the dessert that she takes away." Gintoki promises as he follows Hijikata back up to the path, watching broad shoulders framed by tall grass and the bleeding, violet sky of sunset. 

"Old man," Gintoki says, plopping down a box of sweets and a couple dango wrapped in paper onto his lap. "Tell me something."

"Something." Jirocho looks up at him from under his severe brow, his face completely straight. 

"You're so full of shit. I'm serious." Gintoki kicks the bedpost lightly, and Jirocho laughs loud. 

"What is it, brat?" He gently tears off a dango from the skewer and chews thoughtfully. 

"There's this person," he starts slowly. "I feel like I've known them forever. It's starting to creep me out."

"Just means you suit each other, is all." Jirocho starts unwrapping the box of sweets. 

"No, more than that." Gintoki coughs in embarrassment. "More."

"More?" His stark white eyebrows lift up. His eyes shift from Gintoki to the corner of the ceiling panel, then out the small window. He looks oddly wistful; Gintoki isn't used to seeing such a gentle expression on his carved and weather-beaten face. "Something to do with your thoughts, then." He finally says, jerking out of whatever dream-world he was in. 

"Thoughts?"

He jerks his chin down at the box of sweets in his lap, where his hands rest. He interlaces his fingers. "Like that. You're holding onto each other."

"Holding onto each other?"

"You gonna repeat everything I say?" Jirocho hums. "'I'm a huge idiot.'"

"I know that much, old man." Gintoki dodges the dango skewer thrown at him. 

_Holding onto each other?_

Gintoki writes that down; he doesn't want to forget. 

The doctors have moved Hijikata deeper into the hospital, and it's harder and harder for Gintoki to see him as much as he used to. One day, he is barred outright by a harassed looking Sarutobi, who shakes her head and jerks her chin out at the window. He looks - there's a car that sticks out sorely, new and sparkling clean among small, beaten cars that are at least a couple decades old. This town is stuck in time. 

"Who -" Gintoki starts, but Sarutobi shakes her head furiously and pushes him inside a nearby empty room. 

"His brother," they both say at the same time. 

"Do I come back tomorrow?" Gintoki asks. 

"What if his brother does too?" Sarutobi puts her hands on her hips, the frames of her red glasses winking at him. 

He paces. He doesn't want to bother them, but he's also going mad with curiosity and longing. Sarutobi rolls her eyes and pushes him outside, and they prop themselves up against the rusting bike rack and crack open Sarutobi's pack of fancy cigarettes that her girlfriend sent her from abroad. 

It's bitter. Gintoki pulls a face but smokes the rest of it dutifully anyway, letting Sarutobi laugh at him from her own veil of smoke. 

"Tsukki loves these," she rolls the little stub of her cigarette in her fingers. "They taste like shit, though."

The slow squeak of the doors opening make them both whip their heads around. The Hijikatas, minus Gintoki's (did he actually think that! Like Hijikata belongs to him!) walk out into the parking lot with their heads bowed together. The man has dark hair, but it's not black like Hijikata's is. Rather, it's a dark oak color, and when he looks up to glance at Gintoki he sees pale, cutting hazel eyes. The wife looks at him too, her pale hand tightening unconsciously on her husband's arm as they walk to the car. They are incongruous with the landscape. 

Sarutobi has crushed the filter of her cigarette underfoot when the car pulls away from the lot. Gintoki does the same and watches the car drive over the hill before he walks back inside, taking a set of stairs up to the more private recovery rooms. Only a couple are occupied, but he knows Hijikata's is at the end of the hallway. 

He knocks gently on the door frame. "'S me." he calls. 

Hijikata makes a small noise of assent and Gintoki hesitates before coming inside, closing the door halfway. The room is wider than the old one, but the window is smaller. There's obvious traces that his brother has been here, from the gift basket on the nightstand to the new throw blanket resting on his knees.

"Hes annoying." Hijikata whispers, but his face is one of small, grudging fondness. 

"He seems alright," Gintoki pulls a seat over to sit next to him. 

Hijikata curls his fingers into the throw blanket. "We don't look alike, is that what you're thinking?" .

"No, I -"

"I'm a bastard child, that's why. My father kept mistresses." He shrugs. The movement doesn't suit him. "Tamegorou took me in and he was the only one that ever really cared." 

"Sorry." 

"What for?" 

"Prying."

"You weren't." Hijikata clicks his tongue and leans back against the pillows. He looks tired and drained but restless all at once. 

"Are you okay?" Gintoki can't help but ask. 

"Getting better." Hijikata nods, and he closes his eyes. Dark eyelashes rest on his cheeks like deep shadows. Gintoki wants to touch them.

Tamegorou comes back to visit twice more, before his expensive car peels away from town. Hijikata looks more and more drained after that, and Gintoki attributes it to seeing his brother and reliving a complicated relationship and broaching sensitive topics; but when Hijikata drops a glass of water that Gintoki hands him because of his trembling hands, he stops thinking that it's just a mental thing from seeing his brother. 

The doctors shake their heads when he tries to visit. His recovery room is empty now, and Hijikata is spending more and more time in the examination room and less and less time with Gintoki. 

"Is he alright?" Gintoki asks, and the doctors face is kept carefully neutral. 

"He should be, if the medicine works fast enough." Tama-sensei clicks her pen and taps her fingers along the clipboard. "He doesn't want to see anyone right now."

"That's alright." Gintoki lies. He walks back to his bike and sits on the seat for a while, looking up at the second floor's windows. He feels selfish for wanting to see him. He feels guilty and longing and worried and the window blinks down at him impassively, reflecting the sun. What if he made him worse? What if he missed something when they were walking together and seeing the town, and Gintoki had missed it? What if he had wanted to, so that he could spend more time with him? 

The guilt rises up in a tidal wave and threatens to drown him. 

The blank sheet of the typewriter stares back at him. He knows what he wants to write - he just - can't. He sighs explosively, tipping over to lie on his back. A poem? Not really. Perhaps a short story of some type. Or maybe just a recording of things, just for himself. Or - 

He sits up and dives on the messy stack of reference papers next to his typewriter. He digs through stapled pages, through ripped pages that have been taped back together, past the odd pen or pencil before he unearths what he's searching for with a triumphant yell. It's the small description of the hospital and of Hijikata when he had first met him, thrown together haphazardly that same afternoon. Tongue between his teeth, he threads the paper into it and types out the date; he writes about the day they went for a walk, describes as much as he can. 

(_Shrine garden the living room his back under his hands the river_)

_Holding onto each other. _He ends the passage with that line, reaching for his cigarettes. He exhales a cloud up to the ceiling. He wonders how Hijikata is doing. 

He goes outside to see if any more blossoms have dropped to yield fruit, or the other way around. He paces around the persimmon tree and looks up, shading his eyes from the sun. The swallow's nest is empty and quiet. It is mid-morning, and he can hear them chirping and making a fuss over the river, over the hush of the water; he can see them flitting and blinking in and out of sight above his head, cutting through the air so fast that they look like sparks of shadow. 

"Come home!" He calls out to the clouds. 

Dark, intelligent eyes glance at him, sharp wings continue to twitch through wind. 

Unbidden, he goes to see him again. Another try shouldn't hurt, right? Tama-sensei gives him a pained look but lets him pass, and Gintoki almost wishes she didn't. 

Hijikata is sleeping. His chest rises and falls slowly, but his brow is creased with the look of someone who is suffering. He mumbles and twitches away when Gintoki touches his sweaty brow, his hand clenching the sheets beside his hip. 

"I wrote about you," Gintoki whispers to him, to the room. The window's been cracked open. Birds sing sweetly and flit past the small screen.

"The old man told me stuff about, uh," he stops and takes a breath. "Apparently we're holding onto each other. So there's that." On a whim, he reaches forward and takes his hand. They're soft. Delicate blue veins under the skin of his wrist. He follows them with his eyes until they disappear near his elbow. 

"The swallows are still nesting," he forges on. "They're doing good. I'm thinking of setting up a - a bird feeder or something. Maybe. But I don't want mice waiting under the feeder, so maybe just leaving it near the tree? Hijikata? Do swallows use bird feeders? Do they trust easily? I don't want to put something up and then not have them come, I think that would hurt me," he forces a small laugh. He closes his eyes and leans over, resting his head right next to where he's holding his unresistant hand. 

"I wish you could hear them sing in the morning. They're always so excited about going out and hunting over the water - though when they get close I can't hear them all that well. Say, do they have swallows in Tokyo? I think it would be lonely if they didn't." He's mumbling. There's something choking him, growing in his chest to take up all the space, not letting him breathe. It's not filling him - rather, it's carving him out. He feels powerless. 

"I wrote about you." Gintoki clears his throat, opening his eyes and forcing them not to burn in the face of starched white linen. He digs in his pocket and takes out a square of folded paper. "Wanna hear?"

"Yeah. Read to me." 

Gintoki's head shoots up. 

Hijikata's eyes are cracked open, the smallest sliver of blue peeking through from underneath thick lashes. He's tired, drawn, exhausted - Gintoki could think of a thousand more words, but he doesn't. He's scared. Hijikata's lips are parted for breath, and he hasn't pulled his hand away from his. He's in pain, but he's here - overwhelmingly, irresistibly here and present, in front of Gintoki. 

"Okay." He whispers, and he clears his throat. "'Human made from earth and shadow and stitched with wool and bone like an oil painting twice removed from my plane, seen through a veil. Hills of sunlight and linen, like bronze and ivory,'" he stops to clear his throat. Hijikata squeezes his hand gently - weakly? - and whispers so quietly that Gintoki has to bend closer to hear; 

"Thank you."

"Swallows don't use bird feeders. They're too skittish. They like open spaces." 

"Okay."

"Can I have a drink of water?"

"Ah - yeah, here."

"Mmh - thanks." He knuckles a drop of water away. "They don't have swallows in Tokyo. You gotta come out here to see something like that." 

"Hmm."

"Are you scared?" Hijikata asks him one day. He isn't looking at him. It's raining outside, heavy drops flailing against the windows in wide arcs from the wind. The grass ripples and groans under the weight, and the river looks menacing, cast from iron. 

"Scared?" 

"You know what I mean." He turns to face him then, and his face betrays the meaning and the question. 

"What do I have to be scared of?" Gintoki lies, but the look Hijikata gives him is enough to let him know that he's been caught out in his lie. 

He visits again and again. He feels selfish. Tamegorou visits once, alone, and they bump into each other in the hallway - him on the way out, Gintoki on the way in. His clear hazel eyes are warmer than his first impression, and he stops Gintoki, and to his surprise, thanks him and gives a short bow. He leaves without explaining, smiling patiently through Gintoki's bumbling, leaving him there in front of Hijikata's room dumbstruck. 

He doesn't ask about it when he goes inside either. Gintoki keeps up a steady stream of talk, watching Hijikata's pulse beat faintly at his throat, watching him fall asleep. He keeps talking even then, his voice dropping into hushed tones at the same time that the sky floats down to deeper, warmer colors before finally fading to black. 

"Sunsets always happen faster when you're watching them, huh?" Gintoki asks, and he falters because Hijikata's eyes are open. 

"We're holding onto each other?" He asks sleepily. 

A wide, hollow feeling that sucks him in like a mire. He grabs Hijikata's hand in his and presses his lips to the backs of his knuckles. 

"Yeah," he replies, voice trembling as much as Hijikata's hands. 

He holds them steady in his own.

A couple weeks. They talk less and less but when they do talk they talk about more and more, mostly Hijikata listening. He's weak - he can't pick up a glass of water, and his cheekbones are prominent in his face. Gintoki hates the look of it, hates the dread and the nauseous worry sinking and coiling low in his stomach. He rages against Hijikata's brother sometimes when he is alone in his house; if he has the money, why doesn't he help? If he even cares for him, then he should help! 

He must have been projecting unconsciously, because he bumps into Tamegorou again. His eyes are red, and he's taken off his blazer. His tie is undone too. They catch eyes from opposite ends of the hall. 

Tamegorou walks closer, bows to him. "Thank you." He says, and Gintoki frowns. His voice is even and calm. 

"You -" 

His head is still inclined. "Toushirou talks about you often." 

"Oh - ah. I see," He's at a loss for words. 

"Would you mind if we spoke a little?" Tamegorou stands straight and motions towards the doors. 

"Of course," Gintoki says, and follows him out. His head is spinning. Brothers they might be, but they couldn't be more different. It's raining, so they stand under the awning, facing out towards the road. 

Tamegorou flips open a metal cigarette case and takes one out, offers one to Gintoki who shakes his head. 

"You've made him very happy, Sakata-san." A cloud of smoke. 

"So has he," he replies thoughtlessly, and he cringes and looks at Tamegorou expecting his face to be twisted up but - nothing. Nothing betrays any of his thoughts, and his face is smooth and not creased with anger or disgust. 

"I'm told that -" Tamegorou hesitates. He turns his head away from Gintoki and scrubs a sleeve across his face. 

His heart drops. 

"You must think me heartless," Tamegorou says. "I - there's nothing I can do. They won't move him because they don't want to accelerate it or make it worse, and the medicine isn't doing what it's supposed to and all the doctors worth consulting have been consulted and -" his breath shudders as he draws in a big gulp of air. His frame shakes. Deflates. 

"No," Gintoki says truthfully. "I used to, but - I didn't know the whole story. Now I do." Never mind that his heart is sinking so fast that it must be strapped with lead weights. No matter that his stomach was dropping like he'd been pushed off a cliff. Never mind all that. If Hijikata - if he could help in any way - 

"It's not about me," Tamegorou murmurs. "If you could keep visiting him - I will, too, but I won't be there everyday. Perhaps we can balance each other out. So that he has a familiar face." 

"Alright." _We're holding onto each other_, Gintoki wants to say. 

_He holds me together._

Spring edges slowly towards summer The trees shed the last of their blossoms, and finally the grass is a dark shade of their mature green. The river flows with renewed energy from the snow melt from the tops of the mountains. 

Gintoki is at home that day, writing - writing about Hijikata. His brother. His typewriter ran out of ribbon a couple days ago, and he's been too lazy to buy more so he's just been writing with a fountain pen that his teacher had gotten him a long time ago to celebrate the publishing of his first book.

A sharp twinge of pain in his lower back makes him hiss in discomfort, his arm jerking with the intensity of it; a line of ink sprays across the paper and half onto his mug, and he sits there for a while staring at the mess, feeling curiously hollow before leaning over to clean it up. He replaces the nib and slots another ink cartridge into the pen, and looks out the window. His persimmon tree is eagerly sprouting thick green leaves. If he peers hard enough, the swallows' nest can make itself seen from within the foliage.

His phone rings shrilly from the other room and he ambles towards it, picking up the receiver absently. 

"Hello, Sakata," he answers, but he falters because Sarutobi is on the other end and she is crying gently. 

"Sarutobi?" A bright, shaking lancet of fear. 

"He's gone," she's saying. "He's gone. Hijikata's -"

By the time she says his name Gintoki is already out the door. 

The road to the hospital has never seemed longer. He pushes his motorbike hard, listens to the growing whine of the engine that is barely audible over the thundering of blood and in his ears and the roar of his thoughts, and he has tears in his eyes from the wind as he stumbles off the bike and sprints inside, breath coming in short gasps. 

Sarutobi isn't at the desk. There's no one on the waiting room, and he can hear the rustle and small commotion of the doctors upstairs. He takes the stairs two at a time, breath tearing from his lungs in heaving gasps and sobs. 

Not today. Not ever. It was too soon. Anytime was too soon. He couldn't. He can't leave first, Hijikata couldn't - 

He rounds the last banister and bursts through the doors to the third floor, and smacks right into Tamegorou. He's knocked back into the wall from the impact, and he scrambles back to his feet. Panic, panic panic. Dread and fear and something that chokes him but he can't cry, because Hijikata can't have gone without seeing him first -? 

Selfish. Selfish and greedy and guilty, that's what he is. 

The doctors bar his way from the room, saying _only family members_ and Tamegorou shakes his head and points at Gintoki too, his mouth moving and his brow creased: he can't hear. There's a ringing in his ears, almost like a shriek, and when the doctors give him a small, indecipherable look, he walks forwards as if in a trance. Tama-sensei is there, and he can see Sarutobi's bright head of hair in the crowd of nurses. 

The room is like a different dimension. A still life. Tamegorou kneels beside the bed, holding Hijikata's hand. He's crying silent tears. 

His panic reaches a crescendo and then nosedives; the endgame. He hears a dull ringing, feels a dull ache in his bones and in his blood. 

He is so still in death. His face is free from pain, increased and relaxed. He looks like he will wake from a deep sleep anytime soon. 

Gintoki moves forward slowly, trance-like, sleepwalker, dreamer, lover. "Hijikata?" He hears himself ask. The hum of the radiator. The shuffle of feet outside, the low murmur of voices- but none of them his. 

"Why did you go," Gintoki asks. He kneels next to him, pressing his forehead to their entwined hands. "You shouldn't have left first," he chokes, and he can't say more, but he thinks he will understand. _I love you. I love you. I love you. From the moment I laid eyes on you. _

"Hold on to me," Gintoki pleads softly, pressing his trembling mouth against cool knuckles. 

He wakes at dawn to hear a bright warble and twittering. Unbidden, he wraps himself in the duvet from his futon and drags it to the veranda doors, sliding them open and peering up at his garden. 

The warbling starts again, piercing the early morning chill like a knife through water. It's close. 

He looks up. 

There's a mass of mud and twigs stuck to the eaves of his roof, and he blinks and rubs his eyes. When he opens them fully, a swallow drops out of the nest, singing as it flits over his head and towards the river in the east, towards the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a SADIST I'm so sorry. Feel free to come yell at me @drunkmaenad. The next chapter won't be as much of a sucker punch.
> 
> ....or will it ....


	3. third; part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Coming towards the conclusion - this is the longest fic I've written, EVER, and the most time I've spent on it too. I had to split the last part up into two sections because I kept finding new things to add... hopefully it wraps up nicely and lives up to what I've written so far - I like keeping it consistent! 
> 
> This is modern era, and while Bushu is introduced, there's no actual specific village named Bushu in Japan; it's another name for Mushashi province, which includes Tokyo. The Bushu mentioned in here is based off of Fukui prefecture, which is on the western coast. 
> 
> Enjoy! Thank you for reading, and I hope you're looking forward to the next part! ^^

The high pitched whine of cicadas; the air is still and sluggish and heavy with indulgence. The sun hangs devoid of feeling in a blank blue sky, no clouds to flank and no wind to waver its heat. 

It's much too hot to be lying beside him like this, Gintoki thinks, even as he shifts imperceptibly closer. They've stripped down to their underwear, and Hijikata has a book propped open on the pillow as he smokes steadily on his stomach, eyes following trails of words through a thicket with glasses perched precariously on his nose. 

Gintoki flips over onto his stomach and plucks the cigarette from Hijikata's unresisting hands and takes a long drag, making sure that he is within eyeshot. The tip of the filter is slightly damp from Hijikata's mouth. The thought makes his eyes close as he breathes out the sweet smoke straight up towards the ceiling. 

There's the grating shiver of porcelain as Hijikata drags the heavy ashtray closer to them. He picks the cigarette from Gintoki's fingers and stubs it out, and if he slits his eyes they look like stubby sticks of incense. 

"Those will kill you, you know." Hijikata deadpans, flipping a page. 

"You smoke a pack every two weeks." Gintoki retorts, sliding his head into Hijikata's periphery. 

"And?" He looks up and adjusts his glasses, blue eyes defiant but playful. His gaze pins Gintoki like he's been plunged into water, and not with the fear of drowning - simply helpless relaxation as he adjusts to the shock.

Any reply that Gintoki is trying to scrounge up fizzles out then and there. "Never mind." He grumbles, flopping onto his side. If he stretches out his leg he can almost reach the latch on the window to open it wider, and it's hot as all hell in the room so he's gotta - gotta stretch up a bit higher -

"Oy, you're gonna end up breaking your hip trying to flash the entire street." Hijikata marks his page with a corner of the pillow and kneels up, flipping the latch and sliding the window farther up. A weak whimper of slightly less damp air wheezes in, and Hijikata sighs along with it. Gintoki watches the stretch and languid pull of muscle under his pale skin, still so pale even during the height of summer, and thinks about last night and the night before when he felt it and mapped every single inch - 

"When do you think the heats gonna break?" Hijikata is asking. He takes off his glasses and leans against the windowsill, looking up into the sky. Gintoki can't help staring at the beauty mark beneath his mouth, at the pale, almost invisible scar on his back from his childhood. He picks out a bite mark on the back of his thigh. 

"As soon as it gets unbearable. Then the rain starts - big, torrential rain from huge clouds the size of Tokyo itself." Gintoki says, tearing his eyes away from his pale musculature.

"It's pretty unbearable now, isn't it?" Hijikata asks, his tone sardonic. He tosses his glasses onto the table and lies back down, sighing. He slings an arm over his eyes. "Heat's driving me crazy." 

"We should drink tonight." Gintoki blurts. He thinks of the six pack in the fridge; they could toss it in the freezer for a couple hours and watch shitty monster movies until they fell asleep near the screen doors. He thinks about the lilt in his vision and his senses and the glazed look in Hijikata's eyes, the pale blush high up on his cheekbones. 

"I have work tomorrow." He answers, peeking out from under his arm. 

"You don't go in till late. I'll go out for snacks. You put the beer in the freezer." Gintoki rolls over Hijikata and smiles at the mock groan of pain, and starts rooting around the room for his discarded shorts and shirt. 

"How'd you know that?" Hijikata asks. 

"Huh?"

"That I go into work late." 

"You always leave late on Tuesdays. It isn't hard to add two and - ah!" Gintoki announces, extricating his clothes from under a duffel bag. 

When he puts his clothes on and looks at Hijikata he sees a strange look on his face - something like longing but also frustration - that passes too quick that it seemed like the light had been wrong.

"Can I borrow 1000 yen?" Gintoki asks, and almost immediately he catches the wallet that Hijikata throws at him. 

"Thanks," Gintoki throws over his shoulder, but there is no reply as he leaves, whistling. 

Hijikata looks around his room and sits on the bed for a while. Here and there, little evidence of Gintoki's slow advance and march into his life and his space. The wrappers of sweets in the trash, the messily discarded clothes, even the slight depression in the sheets next to him, the sweet smell of his shampoo and the musk of his sweat. Lingering. 

He pulls on his laziest, most comfortable shirt that doesn't even qualify to be called a shirt anymore what with the hem being frayed and the collar being stretched out nearly to his chest, and he wanders out into the kitchen to put the beer in the freezer. He waters his plant and opens the door to the veranda to let the nonexistent breeze in, then gives up and closes it. His shitty building's air conditioning is broken and he can't convince them to fix it, and he has half a mind to fix it himself. 

He goes back to his room and leans halfway out the window, book forgotten in the hills and valleys of white sheets as he watches the street for Gintoki's return. He can't help his vision sliding a year into the past to when they first met - the polar opposite of a day like today, with thick snow blanketing the ground and the only color from the fluorescent lights of downtown Tokyo and slick asphalt, black as pitch. 

A white head lilting and swaying in the dark and Hijikata remembers squinting at the smear of white against the backdrop of drained colors and city blurs and approaching the person without hesitation. He'd been walking funny. He'd tilted too far, and caught himself with one hand on the wall.

"Hey," Hijikata had called out, and the man had stopped, tilting his head back to look at him. He'd hard tears streaked across his face. He felt like he could see the heat rising from his face in the dead winter air.

"You okay?" He's taken aback, but he doesn't falter. He can hear his blood in his ears. 

"Jesus," Gintoki had said, wiping his face on his sleeve. "You a cop or something?" 

"I," Hijikata blinked. He wasn't - he worked for a law firm downtown and translated books in his spare time. He doesn't even know, to this day, what made him approach a stranger on the street. "No. Sorry. I - I didn't mean to surprise you."

(Something magnetic between them at the first word; like getting a sip of a drink and knowing that it would send you spiraling into want and longing, driven crazy by the snatch of taste)

"Wait," Gintoki had sniffed, and sighed out an explosive cloud of white haze. "You late for anything? Come have a drink with me. Please." He'd added on the plea so quietly that Hijikata could have pretended not to have heard it.

"Okay." He finds himself agreeing, and he follows Gintoki to the soft glow of neon lights near Kabuki-cho. 

"You're not scared I'm a murderer or something?" His voice is rough as he steps into a bar, and he almost bumps into him as he ducks under the noren and finds him standing still right there in front of him. 

"Wouldn't you have murdered me in that alley back there?" Hijikata hooks a thumb over his shoulder, brow raised. "And I doubt one would invite me to go drinking." 

A whole laugh and something warm flows in Hijikata's chest. "I'm Sakata Gintoki. Now you have my name so you can report me." 

"Hijikata Toshirou." He can't help the little tilt of his head, and he follows broad shoulders straight up to the bar, where a stately old woman smokes steadily and pours drinks. 

"Oy, gran, sake for the two of us," Gintoki says lazily, and the old woman throws a venomous look at him. 

"Who's 'Gran'? That's Otose-san to you." She puts down two dishes and a tokkuri in front of the two of them, nodding politely to Hijikata.

Sweet sake and even sweeter lights as the night outside darkens but Kabuki-cho's cool, impersonal glow keeps them warm and real in a cocoon of amber and shades of neon. Sleepless. All around them these displays of detachment and superficiality cloaked in warmth and something bittersweet, and as the night wears on Hijikata picks up Gintoki's story and his character bit by bit.

His teacher had just passed away in an accident some time ago, and it was related to him in some intricate way that the sake wasn't helping him tell. It was the anniversary, and he was feeling more guilty than usual so he'd gone out for a walk and walked until he didn't really recognize the neighborhood. 

Then: Hijikata. Then Otose's snack bar. Then a couple drinks and a couple lazy stories and anecdotes about themselves and then Hijikata's apartment, and a sweet, lingering kiss that made him feel weightless, his stomach swooping and ricocheting inside of him and then he was gone in a taxi that Hijikata doesn't remember calling, a crumpled napkin with his phone number clenched tightly in his fist. 

The doorbell chiming here and now rips him out of those dark streets and the pleading warmth of the duvet of a year ago and back to here in scorching heat. 

He walks slowly to the door and looks out the peephole - Gintoki stands there grinning sheepishly, one hand in his pocket and the other hanging onto a plastic bag bulging with food. 

"Forgot the keys," he says, and Hijikata rolls his eyes and opens the door for him, taking the bag. 

"What'd you get?" Hijikata sets the bag on the counter and goes to sit in front of the movies on his shelf, thumbing through them. Something mindless and something that they could tune in and out of like a daydream, something that they could use as white noise.

"Ice cream, squid, that crunchy seaweed stuff you like," Gintoki replies, crinkling his nose as he unpacks each item with a flourish. "Spicy shredded calamari, mayonnaise -" 

"You're a marvel." Hijikata deadpans, but offers a small smile up at him. He holds up an alien movie. "Aliens?" 

"Aliens." He agrees. 

It's not that he's shitfaced- he's really not, he can hold his drink, and they've only gone through half a case together so that's - what, two beers apiece? Not too much. Not too much. Gintoki's gaze shifts to the coffee table and he counts the cans littering the top and behind it the alien movie plays listlessly, volume low so that the screaming is but murmurs and distant notes of discord. 

He loses count and he counts in circles over and over until his thoughts drift back and forth like seasickness. 

He's not shitfaced. He's not. He watches Hijikata watch the movie - no, not watching. Looking at the movie. His eyes are glazed over, but when they slide over to his they are clear and sharp. They're not shitfaced, not the way that Gintoki wanted. He thinks that they are maybe more sober than the other lets on, but to the same degree, to the point where they are in sync and not one nor the other is acting as if they are drunk. Or maybe the other way around, where they are the same level of drunk, and that makes them reach a certain point where they are in touch with each other. Either way. Strange. Strange synchronicity. 

When he looks back to Hijikata he meets a steady blue gaze and he wants to look away first but that would mean he's lost, right? So he holds his gaze even as Hijikata comes closer and closer until it feels like he's being stifled by his eyes and the tired lines under them and the soft smudge of black of his lashes and then he has to close them because his mouth is on his. Gintoki breathes in once, then out through his nose, feeling the low edge of the sofa dig into the high points of his back as Hijikata presses him into it. His hands come up and thread through his hair, tugging gently at the black strands - black as slick winter asphalt, he thinks to himself, and his fingers slip down to his cheek and touch gently, in wonder. 

They part with a soft noise but Gintoki is still hanging on to Hijikata's face so he stays there, half in Gintoki's lap and half out - until Gintoki releases him and bumps their foreheads together. 

"You know," Gintoki starts, listing slightly as he reaches for his can of beer (maybe he is a little drunk, but he'll never admit it). "You know." His fingers bump against the table first before finding the can. 

"What?"

Gintoki looks at him - really looks at him. Blue eyes and black hair and the fine laugh lines around his mouth, the usually flat line of his lips that Gintoki loves to make smile and gasp and draw taut and tease - 

"I feel as if," he tries the words in his head, rolls them around his mouth before saying them. "I feel as if I've known you forever." 

There's no suspicious or contemptuous arch to Hijikata's eyebrow as some small part of him expected. Only a little nod. 

Gintoki lets his head fall back onto the edge of the sofa and sighs mightily. "You too?" Something like relief bursting through his chest at the lack of contempt and the quiet acceptance of what he's said. A silent victory. 

Hijikata is not looking at him. He looks out the window towards the endless night and sleepless buildings of Tokyo. "Something familiar about you." he murmurs. 

"Are you drunk?" Oh. That didn't quite come out right. 

A defensive look comes over Hijikata's face as he whirls back to look at him. "No," he says, most definitely drunk. "Are you?"

"No." Gintoki crawls towards him on his hands and knees and Hijikata mirrors him and crawls back until he is pressed against the cool glass of the door onto the veranda; a backdrop of the faintest and most stubborn stars, of blinking lights and the amber glow of cars. He goes right up to him and presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, concentrates on the tickle of his lashes and the slight tilt of his head as he seeks him out with his mouth. Hijikata won't ever admit it, Gintoki thinks smugly, but he loves kisses. 

He kisses him until his shoulders relax against the glass and his hands touch his own, weaving fingers together like thread, until his brow smooths out. 

"You believe in past lives?" Gintoki asks lowly, hushed, like he's telling ghost stories. The city casts a strange light on his face. He looks washed out, like a watercolor. 

His blue eyes are steady as he keeps his gaze. "Something like that." 

"What about fate?" 

"You making fun of me?" 

"No. Answer me. Stuff like destiny, like it was meant to happen." Gintoki says stoutly, nudging his cheek with his nose. 

He doesn't say it; instead Hijikata nods minutely against him, and when he pulls back to look at him his eyes are closed with the thought of - something. Weighed down with the memory of it, because Gintoki can feel that he is recalling something from long ago and it perplexes him to do it. 

"Like that night - " Gintoki starts, and Hijikata nods again. 

"I still don't know why I went to you." His voice barely carries to his ears. "I kept thinking about it lately and I can't explain it. I wasn't even curious. I see worse all the time and - " he chokes a bit and cuts himself off. 

Behind him, the sky rumbles and splits as rain begins to fall, slipping onto the glass and slithering into the cracks in the pavement; it splits the light of the city into rivulets and casts the two of them in ghostly shadow, like a bad film noir with the grey streaks against their face. 

Gintoki looks out at the city skyline for a moment; he feels choked. It's stifling. It looms on all sides like the maw of some hungry animal. He pushes the thought to the back of his mind. 

"S'just 'cause I was devilishly handsome, I suppose, you can't chalk it up to fate; just good old animal instinct." He jokes, but through the dim light and Hijikata's dim laugh he can still see doubt and the weight of thought in his eyes. 

"I think..." Hijikata starts, searching his face. His gaze is too intense for a night that was supposed to end on a high, light note, preferably, Gintoki thinks dourly, with the two of them so close that they would be breathing the same air. 

"What?"

"...Nothing. Never mind." Hijikata lifts and drops one shoulder and lightning flashes as if on cue. The sky is dyed some horrific shade of violet then, like a healing bruise, and the room's pale walls are awash with sickly light for an instant before it fades away. In that flash, Gintoki sees - somehow - another Hijikata, undoubtedly. 

The other Hijikata wears a dark blue yukata that he certainly hasn't seen him wear before, with black trim at the edges and a pattern of cranes taking flight embroidered along the fabric. There's a kiseru tucked into his clothes, the front of his yukata gaping open slightly enough to show the beginnings of what looks like a scar - 

And as soon as he sees it, it's gone with the gentle ebb of the lightning. Gintoki rubs his eyes from the flash. He's not drunk. He's not. 

Still. 

He pats at Hijikata's chest, searching for the collar of his loose sleeping shirt (it really shouldn't even be called a shirt at this point, what with how stretched out and worn out it is) and tugging it gently away from his skin. He can hear his blood rushing in his ears, Hijikata's muted protests at his searching hands. 

"Hey. What are you doing -" Hijikata asks, but he doesn't stop Gintoki's hands as they map out his skin. A slow flush rises to his cheeks. 

His chest is unmarred. No scars. Just some stupidly well defined muscles. 

"Just checking." Gintoki bends to press a little kiss to the tip of his collarbone. "Say, you've rarely worn yukata before, right?" 

"Strange," Hijikata says, his head cocked. "I could ask you the same thing." 

Gintoki finally falls asleep on the couch in the end, the dim play of light and special effects on the screen leaving a dull parody on his face. For all his bluster, he ended up crashing first, but that leaves Hijikata with only a smug feeling and the job of carrying him and putting them both to bed. 

His head lolls against his shoulder as he walks the short walk to the bedroom and lays him down on the thin blanket that they use just as a formality, and he throws the window as wide as it can go to let in the cool air, scented with rain and traffic. 

He saw something - someone - different when lightning flashed. He knows it. He's not shitfaced. 

Hijikata goes to drink water from the tap because he's too lazy to go into the kitchen, and undresses for bed. He tucks himself into the covers and after a second thought, looks at Gintoki - almost as if he is making sure, but he pushes the thought away uneasily.

Sure enough; unchanged and still white haired and brown eyed, clean skin instead of the exhausted, thin apparition from the veranda. Another Gintoki, streaked with dirt (was it dirt?) but still with the warmth and the unassuming backbone in his eyes, mirroring the real Gintoki's movements like an afterimage.

He knows what he saw. It wasn't a drunken hallucination. 

He turns away from Gintoki, then on second thought, turns back. Better to keep an eye on him, he thinks suddenly. 

He doesn't know when he falls asleep, but he does know that he dreams about Bushu, about going home and seeing his brother. 

Beside him, Gintoki dreams about a garden and a river, with salt-tail dragonflies whizzing around him like little bullets. He dreams that his teacher is there too, a hand on his shoulder but never letting him see his face. He dreams of him talking, his thumb moving steadily over the skin of his shoulder as he soothes, grounds, centers Gintoki. The thought comes unbidden as he looks over the wide field - this place is too small for you. 

He wakes up with a hangover and a bittersweet, nostalgic taste in his mouth. 

Hijikata kisses him goodbye the next day, when Gintoki is still half asleep in bed with his hair sticking up every which way. 

"Leaving early?" he slurs, looking at the clock and loosing a jaw-cracking yawn. 

"Okita can't make it. I'm covering." Hijikata clicks his tongue. "Don't stay in bed all day, alright? It's almost 3."

"Yeah, yeah." Gintoki waits until he can hear him scuffling with his shoes at the door, hear his hand on the knob and the click of the handle. "See you later," he calls just in time, as the door is shutting. 

The apartment looms back at him. 

He gets up eventually, takes a quick shower and picks at some leftovers in the fridge (put into Tupperware and neatly labelled with Hijikata's uncharacteristically looping hand) before cleaning halfheartedly. He leaves his desk be, though, because he would throw a fit if any of his carefully organized chaos were disturbed. He insists he knows where everything is, but Gintoki has seen him rifling around his desk in a frenzy too many times to believe that. 

He fetches the mail, the rain having mercifully broken the oppressive heat and giving way to a cool breeze. He shades his eyes against the sun and squints down at the letters and the crumpled flyers. The supermarket is having a sale, some real estate news, some bills, a travel leaflet, and a heavy envelope with 'Hijikata Tamegorou' printed in stocky letters in the sender slot. He goes back upstairs and leaves the mail in a pile on the counter, and checks his phone. Hijikata has sent him a blurry picture of the office, which is half empty save him, Kondou-san, and Saitou. 

Should have made it even and not gone, Gintoki texts. 

And let Kondou-san burn down the building? No way 

Chuckling, he tosses the phone back onto the bed and checks the clock. It's nearly 5, and he guessed he should be making some type of dinner sometime soon instead of letting them both eat takeout again. He flips through the supermarket leaflet and clips a couple coupons before walking to the store and buying ingredients for hamburg steaks. 

While he is standing in line, he realizes how hopelessly domestic it all is.

He doesn't hear the key in the lock over the radio and the sizzling from the stove. He doesn't realize Hijikata's home until he hears the door slam, and he sticks his head out into the hallway to greet him. 

"You look like shit," Gintoki comments, and gets a shoehorn thrown at him. 

"Try working three people's jobs at once," Hijikata drags a hand down his face, loosening his tie with the other. He leans into Gintoki's space over the stove, looking down at the garlic and the oil sitting beside the steak in the pan. 

"Smells okay," Hijikata calls as he walks towards the bathroom. "It's not gonna kill me, is it?"

"Shut it." Gintoki grumbles, but he bites the inside of his cheek. He's - happy. He's sure about it, he feels like he has a sure footing, like Hijikata is standing beside him and lighting the way for him. It's comfortable like this. 

Hijikata emerges from the bath on a cloud of steam, his face flushed from the damp heat. He has a towel on his head and he's bent over the dresser, rifling around for a shirt to wear. 

He comes back out in a sweatshirt and in just his briefs, yawning and scratching at the back of his neck. He slumps into the crook of Gintoki's neck as he's transferring food to plates. 

"Tired?" Gintoki murmurs. 

"Mmh." Hijikata turns his head and breathes there for a moment before pulling away and taking the plates from him to set the table. 

They eat in the living room, bantering back and forth before Gintoki remembers the letter sitting on the counter. He almost knocks over his glass when he goes to get it, handing it to Hijikata with a muffled explanation of 'it came in the morning'. 

Hijikata's face is unreadable as he slits open the envelope with the end of a chopstick. He draws out the pages (thick, creamy paper) and his eyes travel over the letters with an alarming speed, a furrow growing in his brow as he nears the end of it. 

"Everything alright?" Gintoki asks, sticking more rice into his mouth. 

"In a sense," Hijikata says slowly, and he puts the letter face down beside him and returns to his food; the furrow in his brow doesn't go away. It drives Gintoki crazy. 

He's about to drift off to sleep when Hijikata comes out with it. 

"He wants us to visit." he says into the gloom, because his room is never completely dark because of Tokyo's lights. 

"Huh?" Gintoki slurs, jerking back from the precipice of sleep. 

"Sorry - sorry. Go back to sleep. I'll tell you tomorrow."

"No, you can't do that - tell me, I'm awake," Gintoki says, propping himself up onto one elbow and rubbing the grit out of his eyes 

"My brother wants us to visit." He says again. "Bushu."

Bushu! That makes him think of idyllic rice fields and small, cramped villages, with winking slivers of color that reveal themselves to be dragonflies, small flashes on the edge of your vision that turn out to be swallows. A full meal, an indulgence of Hijikata's past where he's only been given a taste. 

"Bushu?" Gintoki repeats slowly. 

"Yeah." Hijikata shifts, drawing the blanket further up his chest like a scared kid. "What do you think?" 

"I think," he starts. "I think it might be good. You're always overworking, it might be good to get out of here for a while." He doesn't add that the lights and the buildings of the city make him feel like he is being cornered, like he can't get enough air. He used to spend summers with his teacher in the countryside, and that was where he felt the best and most like himself. He misses the openness of it all. 

"I don't overwork -" Hijikata cuts himself off at the pointed look that Gintoki gives him. 

"And think about yourself too. Not just me. Do you wanna go?"

"Yeah, I wanna." Gintoki collapses back onto the bed. He turns his head so he can look at Hijikata. "I feel kinda - don't get me wrong, it's nice to have all this constant rhythm, but I feel kinda - kinda stuck in Tokyo. I don't know." 

"Then we should go," Hijikata says. 

Gintoki blinks. "Huh."

"We should go, I said."

"No, I got that, it's just - huh."

"What?"

"You - don't make snap decisions like that. Especially when it comes to your brother."

"It's different," Hijikata says.

"Bullshit." 

"Really." he hesitates. "It's strange to say aloud."

Gintoki raises an eyebrow. 

"When we were drinking last night - when there was the thunderstorm." 

"Yeah," he replies slowly.

"What I saw - what I think I saw." He stops, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I'm out of it. I think the vacation will do some good. Maybe focus more on us." The implication is clear. What he thinks he saw. He doesn't want to mention the other Gintoki that he might have seen, because once you say things like that aloud they lose their magic. 

It sounds crazy. It sounds like he's delusional. But Gintoki believes him - after all, he saw a different Hijikata too, much too clearly and sharp to be a drunken hallucination. He nods slowly. 

"You believe me?" Hijikata asks.

"Yeah." He nods. 

"I'll get tickets for the bullet train." 

"Yeah," Gintoki replies, half-here, half-dreaming. He lays his cheek on the pillow and watches Hijikata tap away at his laptop, until his eyelids grow heavy and the spaces between blinks grows longer and heavier, until he can't feel anything at all. 

Okita looks at him, unimpressed and flat faced when he tells the group that he's taking a week off. Kondou-san is nodding along enthusiastically, saying that he overworks and he pushes himself too hard and Toshi, it will be good for you to get away from this for a while! and Hijikata nods back, before giving a short goodbye and heading towards the door. 

He hears Okita's fast footsteps following him. 

"If you're gonna chew me out for leaving you with the work -" Hijikata starts, but Okita's face is creased. 

"I'm not. I have -" he coughs. "I have a favor to ask of you."

Hijikata stills. "Alright." How strange of Okita to look so reduced - how strange of him to even pretend to defer to him like this. 

"You're going to Bushu, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I have some things that I would like to return to my sister, but I haven't quite gotten around to it. Would you deliver them for me?" 

"Alright."

"I'll drop them off at your apartment."

"Okay."

"Is your address still the same?"

"Ye - how do you know that!"

Their knees touch on the train. The person sitting beside Hijikata gets off the train and Gintoki comes to sit beside him, eventually falling asleep with his head lying against his shoulder. 

The hush of the train over the tracks. The hiss and slither of a brief summer downpour, sliding against the windows until his vision looks like a kaleidoscope. Hijikata lies awake, half dreaming about his brother's home. The old, creaking floorboards and the new tatami they would bring in every spring. The swallows nesting in the eaves. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift, his cheek tickled by white hair. 

Gintoki's breathing is even and deep. He tries to match his own breathing to his, eventually drifting into half lit, grey scale dreams. 

The chime of the train seems unfriendly when it wakes them, as they arrive at the station. Grimacing at the taste in his mouth, he nudges Gintoki awake. 

"It's our stop." He murmurs. He makes to get up, but Gintoki pulls him back by his sleeve.

"What?" Hijikata asks, opening the overhead and taking out their bags. 

"Come down here." Gintoki murmurs, still soft from sleep. 

"What is it?" He leans down anyway, brow creased, and Gintoki presses a kiss to his mouth - or rather, the corner of his lips. 

"Oops," he leans up again. "Here." The second one is spot on, lingering and hot. "You're all tense," he whispers when he pulls away. His fingers are tight in the collar of his shirt. 

Tense? 

The train car is empty save for them. 

Bushu is exactly as he remembers it. The roads still cracked in the same places, still quiet and still lonely. Stuck in time. The same lazy, dipping call of birds and hesitant whine of cicadas that have come out of hibernation early. He can hear the slow thunder of the river far away, and he lets himself breathe. It's different. It's the same. No - Bushu is the same, but he is different. 

"Is it the same as you remember?" Gintoki asks, leaning into him. His eyes are sleepy with forced nonchalance; he can see him brimming with questions. His free hand sneaks around to wrap around Hijikata's hip, sliding up farther to touch at the small of his back. 

"Not really," Hijikata says. A half truth. 

Gintoki hums and takes his hand. 

They walk for some time, picking their way around the cracks in the road, stepping over weeds and grass. Eventually, Hijikata turns them down a wide dirt path. There's a house at the end of the path, wide and sprawling. Behind it, Gintoki can see an ocean of green. Spots of dark flit around, and for a second he thinks they are sunspots in his eyes before realizing that they are swallows. It's quite late in the afternoon. They glide and sail over the ground like dark arrowheads loosed from some powerful bow. 

"They're catching dragonflies." Hijikata explains when he catches him looking. He's slowed to a halt, his hand on the low stone wall that traces the path. 

"Oh," Gintoki squints; everything is so fast. For a long time, Hijikata's past had always seems muted and distant; always in the background, always something that lingered on the edge of consciousness and teased him. Always like fiction, on the edge of letters or in stories - but now - 

Hijikata looks torn as he gazes at the house. His grip tightens on the stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love ending things ambiguously because it makes it seem like i know what im doing but also its to hide the fact that i don't know what im doing .... 
> 
> anyways. thank you always for reading. mwah mwah!


	4. third; part two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first; yayoi-san is the name of tamegorou's wife uhhh im currently watching given and uenoyama's sister is also named yayoi and i like to think that the yayoi-san in my story had her energy, especially when she was younger.
> 
> second; all notes at the end! please read - it's basically a love letter to you, readers.

Everything is a haze. 

The windows are in the wrong place. He feels off kilter. Gintoki blinks up at them, curls his fingers into the futon. It smells different. He inches backwards until his shoulder bumps against a familiar warmth, and he closes his eyes again. This is the same. 

Hijikata kisses him awake, muscles of his shoulders pulling as he hovers over him. Gintoki shifts and lets him go without complaint, watching him drag one of their bags towards him and getting dressed. Sunlight streams in like ribbons, puddled in corners of the room and directly on top of Gintoki's stomach, making it uncomfortably hot. 

"Breakfast. Come on," Hijikata murmurs. 

Gintoki squeezes his eyes shut in an effort to dispel the last dregs of fatigue. There's an old, long missing comfort in his bones. 

The house is big and sprawling in the way that old buildings are. It's an old house, with secretive, curling eaves and black roof tiles that ripple in the heat like scales, wooden wind chimes that sing their peculiar hollow song through the alternately high and low ceilinged house. Meticulously clean tatami. A scroll on the wall that says _simplicity and fortitude_ that Hijikata says is his family's mantra of sorts. He has a smaller one back home that he keeps on the door of the closet, one that Tamegorou did himself. 

Tamegorou leans into Yayoi-san with an easy comfort. He smiles easily, his eyes downcast and hooded. He is blind. He has graying hair that matches the sharp grey of Yayoi-san's eyes, and her smiling mouth matches his. The glass beads on her kanzashi wink and click at him. Their wedding rings match - his a thick gold band and hers a slim ring of flashing gold. Sometimes when they hold hands they tap together. 

Gintoki watches their grace, watches Hijikata and Tamegorou slide into well worn grooves. He feels almost voyeuristic, and sorely out of place. 

"What are your plans?" Tamegorou is asking them. 

"I have to deliver some things. For Okita." Hijikata says, but the clenching of his fingers in his lap belies his knot of anxiety. Gintoki's eyes linger on his fingers before looking back up at Tamegorou.

"She still lives out by the river," Yayoi-san taps her chin. "By the shrine." 

Hijikata's face is unreadable. "Thank you." He helps put away the dishes, his movement sluggish, like he is trying to buy time. Tamegorou is getting dressed to go the shrine, and Gintoki's stomach dips at the thought of the stifling incense, the sharp corners and oppressive silence. It clings.

Hijikata asks Gintoki if he'd want to stay at home, but a stern look makes him stop. Mitsuba - that's her name, and Gintoki remembers a small photo of her and Hijikata clipped and stuck up to the wall before his desk - lives near the market and the river and the shrine, and this town is so small and so close that it seems full to bursting. They walk towards the shrine, along the river. 

With every step Hijikata grows quieter and quieter. His grip tightens on the package that Okita has given him to give to his sister, and the brown paper crinkles with the force. Gintoki hasn't asked what's in it. 

(The picture taped up above Hijikata's desk has the two of them grinning with their arms interlinked, cheeks flushed from the heat and something else. She was pretty - undeniably so, in a soft and wavering way, like a candle flame. Her head of sandy hair resting on his shoulder. His hand resting on her forearm.) 

"I want you to wait outside," Hijikata finally says, but his tone makes it clear to him that if he were to argue, he would give in. 

"Alright," Gintoki concedes, and he watches Hijikata's back retreat to the front gate and knock, then enter. He can make out excited chatter before the door shuts again. It's maybe half an hour before there's any movement at the front. 

Hijikata comes out with reddened eyes. His hands are empty. He sways close and presses a bruising kiss to Gintoki's mouth, and over his shoulder Gintoki can see the upstairs window flutter with movement. He sees a sandy head of hair and a kind face, before the curtain obscures it again. 

"Sorry for the wait." He says against his mouth, and Gintoki murmurs back something meant to placate. 

As they walk towards the river, Hijikata drowns more and more in his thoughts. Mitsuba had looked happy - her face has glowed, her eyes still bright and strong. She had had lines near them. Time is unforgiving and relentless. He wonders if he's changed in that way and if she'd thought the same things about him. Her husband had been polite and respectful, and Hijikata had stared ruefully at his back as he'd retreated to give the two of them space. 

She'd wondered why he'd left Gintoki outside. I won't bite, she'd giggled, and Hijikata had been thrown back in time. 

She'd accepted the package with steady hands, head bowed as she opened it. A book, a couple packets of medicine, and a photo album. She'd cradled it to her chest, her face pained. _How's Sou-chan? _

He'd nodded jerkily. _Good. Bright and as annoying as ever._

Her smile made him feel warm. Another wrinkle smoothed over. His guilt lessens a bit more each moment, incremental.

The water rushes in time with their breaths. There are no birds. They rest in the trees and sing sweetly, their low, calling song: _men are here there are men near us._

Gintoki takes his hand, clenching hard. 

"Are you alright?" 

"Mmh."

"Will you be alright?" 

"Yes." Hijikata looks across the river and squints; always on the distance, like some mirage, another village sits, barely on their plane of existence. "Gintoki."

"Mm?"

"....thank you."

That blindsides him. "What for?"

"For being patient. And not prying." Hijikata looks across the water, then back at Gintoki. "I'm sorry, too. I know I've been tight lipped -"

"Shut up." Gintoki blurts out. 

"What." Hijikata says, His tone flat. 

"I mean - apologizing is weird coming from you, and I don't have to know everything about you. That's what keeps it interesting. Right?" Gintoki shrugs. "You've never pried into my past, and it's just manners to leave yours alone. What I need to know about you is just - now."

Hijikata blinks. Again. Then nods. 

"Just hold my hand." Gintoki says. "Don't think too hard. You'll catch a fever or something."

"You're the only person that can't say that to me," Hijikata grumbles, but takes his hand anyway, grasping tight. 

The water rushes like a heartbeat, murmuring to Gintoki. The long grass on the shore ripples and bends under the away of the wind off the water, like a wave. It makes him curiously nostalgic, like he is returning -?

How can you return to something that you have never known? 

He feels off-balance. Since the train pulled into the station in Bushu, they have been knocked out of their grooves, both of them spiraling into painfully known territory within themselves - but not knowing how to tread around each other. It makes them stilted. 

They passed by the shrine, or at least the stairs leading up to the peaked roof. They could see it poking out from the greenery, and Hijikata had asked if he'd wanted to go up. 

"Not today," Gintoki had replied, watching a pair of birds spiral up from the trees like smoke. In reality he means not ever; he never wants to smell the incense that they burned at Shoyou-sensei's funeral, never again wants to feel the crushing silence pressing down into his ears and onto his shoulders.

They go to the market for a while, wandering through the sleepy stalls. There are some people that Hijikata recognizes, mainly old people that greet him with a warm familiarity, teasing him and Gintoki with creased eyes and knowing smiles. They buy snacks and Hijikata looks over the stacks of second hand books while Gintoki crunches away at an apple, his eyes following the tail of a lazy, sauntering cat that winds between stalls. 

It comes up to them at one point, pawing gently at Gintoki's shoe. He gives it a small pat on the head and smiles when it purrs at him. 

The river nags at him. The water calmed him, but it also gave him the same feeling that he had gotten on the night that he had first met Hijikata. Not exactly a yearning, but rather something like a comfort. He was familiar. The river was familiar. 

He makes a small noise to get Hijikata's attention. He's buying a couple books, handing money over to the bored teenager who sits behind the counter. 

"What?" Hijikata is busy putting the books into his bag. 

"We should go back to the river." Gintoki says.

"The river?" 

"Something about it -" The clean smell of water and wet soil. The clusters of pebbles and the small fish that darted like tricks of light under the surface. 

"Alright." Hijikata shifts. "Now?" The sun is getting lower in the sky. They have maybe two more hours before Yayoi-san starts setting the table for dinner. 

"Maybe tomorrow," he replies, shading his eyes against the sun. The day stretches like molasses. He thinks of Shoyou-sensei. 

Yayoi-san shows them around the fields behind the house - almost like an enormous garden, really. Gintoki can see fruit bearing trees in the distance, and long, straight rows of bright green. Swallows and sparrows compete in fantastic aerial acrobatics, roiling through the air like leaves in a windstorm. Cicadas cry and whine, their long, steady hum a constant. 

(He thinks of his teacher more than ever during that late evening, zoning out in the way that Hijikata leaves him be. He had only been playing. He had only been playing. And Shoyou-sensei - it was his fault that he -)

Dinner is pleasantly quiet, chopsticks clicking against their bowls. Tamegorou and Yayoi don't seem to find the need to fill the space between them with idle chatter, though they ask about the town and what they saw. Still, being near them is a bit surreal - people that he's only heard about through letters come to life before him, like characters off the page of a book. 

As he finishes his rice, he's overcome with a sense of loneliness. He helps Yayoi-san with the dishes, talking lowly over the hiss of the faucet as they wash and dry. She asks about their apartment, and whether they are both eating alright. About Hijikata's job, then his. She is warm and friendly, and Gintoki smiles easily around her. He can hear the two brothers out in the dining room still, talking quietly so that their words are but white noise for them.

"He was so curious," She muses, passing him a hand towel and then some hand cream. "Curious to see you, to see Toshirou again. He writes about you a lot, you see," she says earnestly. 

Gintoki hides a smile as she bustles around the kettle. He busied himself with taking out cups. 

_Writes about you a lot. Writes about you a lot._

The tea is pale yellow in color and musky and dark in taste, but tailing off into a sweetness. Barley tea, she explains, and she strains it through a net made of corn silk. Gintoki takes a liking to it and has two cups, eyeing the corn silk. Hijikata's knee is pressed to his under the table. It makes him ache, swiping away the film of loneliness that had settled over him. 

"You must visit more often," Tamegorou is saying, sipping from his tea. 

"We will," Hijikata says. "It's just our jobs and everything ... your letter and what Tokyo is like at home was the last push."

"How is Tokyo?" Yayoi-san asks. 

"Same as usual. Cool and impersonal. Very anonymous." Gintoki says. He can see the beginnings of the moon, huge and swollen, through the window across from him. 

When Gintoki stifles a yawn, Yayoi-san catches it and shoos them to their room, bidding them goodnight. Gintoki takes a bath first and taps away at his phone while he waits for Hijikata, replying to texts from Zura, Shinpachi, Kagura. He turns off the lights but draws up the curtains on the windows to let the moonlight in. They can see a lot more stars in Bushu. 

"Still awake?" Hijikata asks, toweling his hair and shutting the door of the bathroom behind him. 

"Yeah, waiting up for you." Gintoki tosses his phone into his bag and pats the futon next to him. Hijikata lies down and throws a forearm over his eyes. 

"You haven't smoked in a while," Gintoki points out, touching his finger to the beauty mark beneath his lip. 

"Don't need it," Hijikata says, peeking out from under his arm. 

"I like that," Gintoki murmurs. "You don't taste like cigarettes when I kiss you." He leans down to kiss him then, the angle strange and stilted from his height, but they make it work. The slide of their tongues is hot and good, and Hijikata's hand tightens on the nape of his neck. 

"Does that bother you?" He asks when they part.

"Huh?"

"The cigarette part." 

"Nothing a couple breath mints won't fix," he teases. Hijikata brings him down for another kiss, his hands sliding around his waist then underneath his shirt. His mouth is twisted into a wry smile at the start, but relaxes into molded heat.

Their breaths come heavy. Half light and moonlight, and they are both painted in broad and hasty strokes of dark and light. The old floor creaks underneath their weight and they stop and laugh nervously like teenagers, hands wandering. The moon stands guard balefully as they touch, ever wondering, ever careful; for even though they are almost mirror images of the other, some parts are unknown. 

Some fragments last. The distinct smell of the detergent that Yayoi-san used for the futons and the sheets, and then the tang of their sweat. The already dog eared book that Hijikata bought from the market, black ink and blue ink from his notes visible on the pages. The smooth give of the tatami beneath his hand as he grasps for something - then Hijikata's hand over his, interlacing their fingers and bringing it to his mouth for a kiss. That makes him blush furiously. It's so incongruous and so tender that is makes him falter, and Hijikata picks up on it and does it again just to see his reaction. 

The pale scar on Hijikata's back, the freckles on his shoulders from being in the sun in just a t-shirt all day. His sweetly pink mouth, open in soft moans; hoarse and raw and so lovely. 

The press of Hijikata's lips to his neck, where he hides his words and his face as he mouths I love you into his skin like he's entrusting him with a secret. 

"Are you better?" Hijikata asks when the moon is near its peak in the sky. 

"What do you mean?" Gintoki scratches his stomach. "The sex? It was good, scratched an itch that -" 

"I don't mean the sex, idiot. You've been all tense the nights leading up to Bushu and now -" he pauses and touches the line below Gintoki's shoulder blades. "You were all knotted up here. Stiff. And now you're relaxed."

"Oh," he scrunched his nose. "Yeah. It's better here. Lazier." he laughs. "I suit Bushu."

Hijikata gives him a wry smile. "Tokyo's too big, right? Anonymous, like you said." 

"Yeah," Gintoki yawns. "We're all just country boys at heart." 

He falls asleep to the gentle stroke of Hijikata's hand over his back.

Perhaps he spoke too soon. He dreams of the night it happened, except the colors are more lurid and so bright they hurt his eyes. He remembers it quite vividly. Pushing aside the screen doors of his creaky old house, and finding his teacher collapsed on the floor - he'd called the small hospital in town, and they had sent an ambulance, but by the time they had gotten to the hospital it was too late. Gintoki had sat out in the waiting room, numb and chilled, his hands as still as stone.The doctor's words were almost unintelligible. _Artery .... the brain ..... an aneurysm .... signs ... balance problems ... dizziness -_

He'd jolted up from his seat and gone outside to throw up into the flower bed. If he had gone to check on him sooner - if he had - 

Gintoki lurches up in a cold sweat. Hijikata's breathing beside him hitches and his brow furrows. He burrows back into the blankets, hiding his face in Hijikata's chest. Tears don't come.

They go back to the river. Hijikata insists they go out early, and the chill coming from the river is reminiscent of early springtime. Gintoki is bleary eyed and yawning, bundled into Hijikata's old college sweatshirt and listing into him as they walk. 

It must be at the very least half an hour after sunrise. Fresh and new and as bright as an egg yolk, Gintoki thinks at the sun. He leans into Hijikata, closing his eyes and letting himself breathe for a moment. Damp earth and grass wet with dew-fall. The rush and rise of vapor from the surface of the river, the chattering of the birds as they sweep out in battalions to hunt over water. Still water. Gentle water. Rushing water. 

Hijikata is very still beside him, all of a sudden, his relaxed form turning hard and attentive. "Look," he whispers, and Gintoki almost loses his voice in the thin morning air. 

He lifts his head. Hijikata's eyes are fixed on the opposite bank some hundred meters away, where there are undoubtedly two people standing, mirror-like, to them. 

Gintoki shivers. There's a primal jerk of fear and he tugs gently at Hijikata's sleeve. "Should we go back? Yayoi-san must be getting breakfast together by now," he says, and he doesn't want to let him hear the apprehension and the shakiness in his voice. Unsettlement. He feels like he is in a house of mirrors, and he's glimpsed his twisted, wavering reflection out of the corner of his eye. 

"I didn't expect people to be out here so early!" A bright voice pulls them both out of their haunting. 

"Mitsuba!" Hijikata says, eyes wide. 

Sure enough - the once-glimpsed sandy hair and the same flushed cheeks. bright, flashing brown eyes that gentle and cross over them. Okita Mitsuba grins at them. 

"What are you doing - ah, Mitsuba, this is Sakata Gintoki. Gintoki, Mitsuba."

"Pleased to meet you," they say at the same time, and Mitsuba smiles again. 

"What am I doing out here? I could ask you the same thing!" 

"Just food for thought," Hijikata replies, and in the lull of conversation Gintoki whips his head back around to look for the figures on the opposite bank. They're gone. Specters. 

"I'm collecting herbs," Mitsuba points at a small basket. "Do you want to help? I can make breakfast."

"No, no, that's -" Hijikata shakes his head. 

"I insist." she says, and her eyes, although they maintain a playful light, harden in stubbornness. 

They follow her instructions to find delicate leaves of mint, mitsuba (like me, she laughs) and follow her to her house where she sits them down to pluck bad leaves and wash the herbs while she cooks. Her husband is away on a trip for her treatment, she explains while looking out the small window. It was a bit too quiet in her house, and how lucky it had been to find them by the river! 

It's a small, simple meal. She's mixed chestnuts into the rice and made miso soup, with mitsuba on top. She eats too little, Gintoki observes. She's too thin under her sweater. 

"How is Tokyo?" she asks, and Gintoki will never understand the fascination about the aura surrounding the city. 

"Big," Gintoki says truthfully. He sets down his chopsticks. "I like Bushu. It reminds me of my teacher." 

He can feel the glancing weight of Hijikata's eyes on his face before they flit back away. 

"Isn't it boring here for you city boys?" she props her chin up on her hand and smiles. 

"Not nearly," Hijikata says. "Nostalgic. Everything's changed."

"Not quite." she says softly. There's a low, thrumming pause. "Come out to my garden?"

Her garden is a wide, sprawling thing, lazy in its space and entirety. Several leafy green trees edge the yard, and she shows them through the new green shoots of grass. 

"I have a plum tree here - peaches there and some persimmon here if I'm lucky in the winter," she laughs, putting her hand upon the gnarled bark of the last fruit tree. 

Gintoki gazes up at the branches - there's an empty husk of a nest in the inner branches, and bright, wide green leaves that cast shadows on them. 

"Things have changed," Hijikata murmurs. The light is a curious shade of green as it touches his cheekbones.

"Not quite," she stands at his elbow, head tilted up to look where he does. "You're the one who's changed, Hijikata-san."

Gintoki doesn't see it - but he catches a glimpse of his face as he turns and walks back inside. He looks like he'd been told some inevitable truth that he'd known but didn't want to hear.

"Hijikata -" he says, and he turns to go after him but Mitsuba lays a hand on his arm, stilling him.

"Leave him," she says, her head drooping. "He'll be alright."

He takes a breath. The summer's light does not seem too kind anymore. 

"You're all -" she waves her hands in the air, looking up at the tree still. Her eyes are bright. "You two glow when you're together. It makes me happy to see it. You're all twisted together like those branches." 

"Twisted together."

"Old souls," she says, tucking her hands into her pockets. "You draw one to another."

He must look a shade too skeptical because she forges on. 

"Don't you believe it? Being familiar. How wonderful to be fated to meet again and again, fall in love again and again?"

Hijikata has done the dishes. They sit in the dish rack. He sits at the front steps, smoking, when Gintoki comes out of the house. 

"How long have you been out here?" He asks. 

"Not long," Hijikata shrugs, and Gintoki sees that his cigarette is almost burnt down to the filter. "Should we go?"

Gintoki nods. They go back inside and bid Mitsuba goodbye, and she hugs the both of them tightly as if they are her lifeline. Her arms are thin but they belie a strength that is incongruous with her figure.

"Will you visit again?" She asks Hijikata, and he nods, even bending close to kiss her chastely on the cheek. 

"Thanks for today." he says. 

"Anything," she replies, and when Gintoki turns the corner he can see her cradling her cheek in her hand. The scary part is, he thinks she means what she says. 

Yayoi-san fusses over them, asking if they're cold and if they've had enough breakfast, and they reply patiently until she lets them go. They bring a tray of tea to the veranda and sit.

"Mitsuba said something about us," Gintoki starts, pouring the tea. 

"Oh yeah?" 

"She said we glow and stuff. And our souls are old and they recognize each other." he shrugs, sipping from his cup. It's scalding and he quickly puts it down, hissing in pain.

"Like were attracted to each other. Our souls I mean." Hijikata nods. "She told me the same thing when we were kids."

"Hmm." A pause swells between them before Hijikata pushes it aside.

"She was in love with me." he says, and his voice is curiously flat and controlled. "I didn't have anything back then. The house had nearly burnt down, and the money was going towards rebuilding it. I didn't have anything to my name. How could we have done anything?" he rubs his eye. "I loved her. I still do - but it's not the same. We've both changed too much." 

"Hijikata."

"What?"

He turns his head and he kisses him, tongue sliding over the seam of his lips. He tastes like tea and the lingering pang of cigarettes.

"Sorry." Gintoki says when he pulls away. "That was - " selfish? Territorial? Possessive? 

"No," Hijikata shakes his head. 

"Do you believe her?" He whispers. 

"The souls?" he looks across the backyard and out to the field. "It makes sense. I'm not superstitious, but if it's come up twice now and we've seen what we've seen - " he falters and pushes a hand through his hair. "In the end, we met each other. In the end we're here, and that's what I need. Ghost stories won't change much."

His heart warms at his words. "Yeah." He thinks about what he saw in the window during the night of the thunderstorm, and he chalks it up to some strange moment where the universe pulled back her veil and let him glance at what had been. Strange thing - but he feels sated by Mitsuba's words. They align with what he knows, and though he has never been a superstitious person, he does know how to take a hint. Perhaps it was just the drink that showed him something that his subconscious knew. Was it his subconscious? Or his previous one, come to haunt his body again? 

The door behind them slides open and Tamegorou steps out onto the veranda. 

"I thought I heard you out here," he smiles at them when they greet him. "Is that tea? Yayoi told me that she'd made some."

"Have some," Gintoki pours him a cup and sets it in his hands. Tamegorou murmurs a thanks and takes a sip.

"I hope I didn't interrupt." he adds, facing the field.

"No," Gintoki says. 

"Have you seen the swallows? They've come back to nest this year. They should be above our heads somewhere - listen." he points at the eaves of the roof. Gintoki cranes his neck but he can't see anything that looks like a nest.

"Here." Hijikata nudges his shoulder and points to a corner that Gintoki hadn't seen. Sure enough - a sturdy little half bowl of mud and feathers and some twigs, currently empty save for the occasional swallow that sweeps near the nest then back out towards the field. 

He has a strange moment then - a flashback of sorts to a similar moment on a similar veranda but this time in another town. Shoyou-sensei's steady presence next to him as he read or practiced math problems. And then our of the blue, his teacher had said - 

_In my next life, I want to be a bird of some kind._

This place makes him miss his teacher in a sharp, persistent way. What used to be a full ache in Tokyo has gone fresh and bright with renewed vigor, a piercing lance that alternately heats to magma and cools to ice.

Hijikata is talking lowly with Tamegorou. Their voices meld together in a pleasant white noise, and Gintoki lets himself lean backwards until his back touches the post in the door frame. Their accents are stronger with each other, Gintoki thinks. Hijikata's voice is more melodic here, and his words lilt and flirt like the waving of flowers on a wind. 

He should visit Shoyou-sensei's grave soon. He wishes he could go back and undo countless things, but in a way he thinks that if he did he never would have ended up exactly in this moment, exactly at this time. On a veranda of an old house that almost burnt down a decade ago. With someone he loves next to him, with a pot of the best tea he's ever had near his knee. A nest of swallows above their heads.

What strange symmetry. 

What Hijikata said about Mitsuba - and her character in general - reminds him of his teacher. It comes in waves, and he sits on the veranda in a stupor, sometimes alone, sometimes with Hijikata, less often with Tamegorou and Yayoi - but the waves dull and recede in their frequency, and he thinks of his teacher more and more and about that hospital less and less. 

Sometimes small flashes of sharp pain will lap at his feet, threatening to pull him under. He fights to stay afloat.

Their last days in Bushu are the best, but slowly the spell wears off as the date printed in impersonal black on the return train ticket glances at them ever so frequently. They buy thank you gifts for the Hijikatas and one for Mitsuba too. Gintoki gets Yayoi-san to teach him how to make the net of corn silk, trading her a delicate kanzashi in the form of a spray of willow. 

She sweeps him into a hug right them and there, with corn silk stuck to both of their hands and on their sleeves. 

"Please come back soon," she says, and Gintoki is both mortified and touched that there are tears in her eyes. "You make Toshirou so happy - and seeing that makes me and Tamegorou happy too. This house is too big for just the two of us."

"Of course." 

"And Gintoki," she murmurs. "No one can handle a weight for long alone. I may never know what it is, but Toshirou would be a good place to start." Then, with a crinkling of her eyes in a bracing smile, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him once on the brow. 

"Nii-san." Hijikata knocks at the shoji screen. 

"Mm, come in. What is it, Toshirou?" his brother motions towards the light switch and Hijikata reaches to turn it on. His brother had been setting out the futon for the night, and some weaving lay unfinished next to the desk. 

"I have something for you. Gintoki and I are leaving tomorrow night, and we thought that we should say thank you." 

"Toshirou," his brother's voice is warm and gentle. It makes his insides lurch, reminding him of the past - long summers in this same house, springs and falls and countless winters spent running to and from the school in the next town over, which was slightly bigger. The empty gaping of the house even though more people had lived there - more relatives and more step siblings. Tamegorou has not changed much.

"You didn't have to," he says. 

"You were the one who taught me to get gifts for hosts," Hijikata says, smiling slightly. He presses a box into his brother's hands.

Tamegorou's head is dropped to his chest, touching the ribbon and the coarse brown wrapping paper that Hijikata bought from the post office. His mouth is set into a smile, small and gentle.

"Open it." Hijikata says.

Tamegorou undoes the ribbon and tears the paper away, and a small box falls into his lap. Inside, there is a soft silk rectangle cinched shut with a drawstring. Tamegorou can feel the hard outline of wood inside of it.

"You got me an omamori," he says softly. 

"For safety and protection of the family and the house. And -" he bites the inside of his cheek. "Simplicity and fortitude." 

Tamegorou laughs, and leans forward until Hijikata enfolds him in a hug. "Thank you, little brother."

Over his shoulder, Hijikata is blinking sudden dampness from his eyes. 

"Anything." 

Mitsuba is by the river again. Her husband had pointed towards the water when they had gone to her house to give her her gift. 

She has a sixth sense and looks up before they can call out to her. She waves, and when they are close enough she squeezes them both in a hug.

"You're leaving, aren't you." she sighs, eyeing first the bag in Hijikata's hands, then their faces. She pats her hands dry on her work pants. 

"Mitsuba," Hijikata starts, but she tuts. 

"I know it already, Toshirou." she smiles up at him but it is a shaking, fragile one that tears at the edges, worn with time. The slide into his given name doesn't make Hijikata flinch. 

"What's been done is done, and -" she closes her eyes, tilting her head up to the sun. "Time goes by quickly."

"Was it real? The things that you told me?" Gintoki asks.

"Of course it was," she says, opening her eyes. They are a vivid hazel that burn with life and tempered gentleness. "You shouldn't lie about those things." 

Hijikata hands her the bag wordlessly. Inside, she'll find a photo album and a book that had reminded him of her, annotated heavily. She cradles it to her chest and bows shortly to them. They bow back.

When the train pulls away from Bushu, a weight seems to leave Hijikata. Gintoki breathes a sigh of longing as they leave the village behind in the distance. They have a bag of tea sachets that Yayoi-san has made for them, and a package of dried persimmons that Mitsuba had made over the winter. 

Gintoki sneaks his hand across the armrest and takes his hand. "Was it okay?" 

"Mm. Yeah. I feel - " he mulls over the words. "Closure? Like I got closure. But not for a bad thing."

"Yeah," Gintoki says, "Me too."

"And say, you know," Hijikata appears to be mulling over the words for a while. "We can always come back. It'll always be here."

Gintoki imagines the train flying through the countryside like an arrow, following the veins and arteries of the railroad network. He imagines that he flies up high enough and long enough that the earth turns its face away from the sun, and night gentles her shroud against the endless green - he imagines that far away, he can see Bushu, a twinkling pocket of lights on the river. And here, on the train - with their knees touching and their fingers brushing, the resounding reassurance: _if we parted, we would surely meet again._

Summer slides lazily into fall, and the chill is upon them like a headache. Fall comes and goes, and then it is winter, marking two years from when they met. Gintoki drowns in memories and sensations as he walks home from Otose's, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his nose buried in Hijikata's scarf to ward off the chill. He knows Hijikata should be walking home around the same time, and if he was quick enough about picking up the ring, they could meet each other and walk the last couple blocks together under the snow and blinking lights. 

He keeps his head tucked down as the wind starts, but when he gets to the crosswalk he raises his head. If he squints the lights all become distended watercolors against the slick black of the nighttime and the asphalt.

He looks eagerly across the street at the light that peeks out from under its cap of snow. When his eyes drift down, they meet a pair of familiar blue ones in a small crowd waiting for the light on the other side. 

The light blinks white for pedestrians. Gintoki smiles at Hijikata and he smiles back, the half tilt of his mouth terribly soft and alluring. All around them, snow falls. Neon glow of Kabuki-cho. The wash of amber and white from car headlights. Slick black asphalt. Still water, open water, swallows nesting in the eaves. The ground beneath his feet. 

And then, nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so they found Tokyo after all! 
> 
> what. a. journey. I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. hopefully it marks the beginning of my foray into longer fics, and hopefully you'll come along for the ride! 
> 
> hope you all noticed some little Easter eggs and throwbacks as well - the village on the other shore, the swallows, the scars, among many. I wanted to tie up loose ends as deliberately as possible, leave out a couple teasers, and dear god I hope I did everything justice.
> 
> special shoutout to rin for being my beta reader and my amazingly patient and bright guinea pig to whom I ramble about story ideas and tells it to me straight. 
> 
> i wanted this last one to be about self discovery and acceptance and some closure too! ive put these boys through a lot. ive put you through a lot, dear readers! thank you always for sticking with me, for finishing this story with me, yelling at me on tumblr, leaving kudos and comments. you helped finish this fic as much as I did! thank you thank you thank you - much love. 
> 
> x. mads


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